Luca Carboni

1992. A year that immediately conjures memories of one of the darkest periods in Italian history. Countless negative events would change our country forever. From mafia massacres to the Tangentopoli corruption scandal, from an 11% budget deficit to the stock market crash that would come to be known as Black Wednesday. In this constantly surreal, bleak, negative climate, jukeboxes were also, incidentally, about to live out the last season of their glorious existence. The Eighties of Italy's historic overtaking of France's economy, of Milano da bere excess, of summers at the seaside "with the crazy urge to row, to swim a bit offshore to see the beach umbrellas from a distance," were suddenly turning into something else. To quote Raf, they were becoming "years seized and already slipped away," "empty as discarded cans."

For Luca Carboni, however, 1992 is the year of full maturity. The year to shed every insecurity and finally try to climb the charts. Italians reward him right from the start. Increasingly tired of lies and corruption, people by now simply want to sing about life, perhaps after lifting their eyes to the sky to ask "if at least he knows the truth" ("Alzando gli occhi al cielo"). And in every verse Carboni indulges this particular need, offering people the simplicity of a daydream, like buying "a used but well-kept motorbike," filling up "the tank on the motorway," feeling "the air on your face" and finally reaching the beach, the sea, the surf.

"Carboni" thus arrives together with 1992. In January. It's the fifth studio album by the Bologna singer-songwriter. The first with Mauro Malavasi at the production helm, the musician and producer from Mirandola behind the Italian-flavored disco revolution of the late Seventies and Eighties, with labels like My Record and Goody Music and one-hit wonders like My Mine and Antennas, the Italian-American act Change, the unforgettable Petrus, and the duo Macho, formed by Malavasi himself with vocalist Marzio Vincenzi. And one could go on citing an endless list of killer singles and productions.

The effect is felt immediately in the miraculous sound that marks a break from Carboni's past, previously dominated mostly by spare arrangements supporting cursed, melancholic, despairing songwriting. The young man who used to wander under the porticoes wearing "Bologna's shirt seven days a week," protégé of mentors Dalla and Curreri, has broad shoulders by 1992, thanks above all to the magical three-year run from 1983 to 1986, during which he released the records that would set him apart from the crowd, namely "…intanto Dustin Hoffman non sbaglia un film" (RCA, 1984) and "Forever" (RCA, 1985), both containing songs that would become unforgettable for droves of lost teenagers, chief among them "Ci stiamo sbagliando" and "Sarà un uomo," opening tracks of the first and second album respectively. Of course, it still bears the narrative traces of sad ballads like "Silvia lo sai," "Farfallina," "Persone silenziose" — the first two featured on his self-titled debut, "Luca Carboni" (RCA, 1987), the third on the following album (RCA, 1989), released just three years before the fateful 1992. Works that were undoubtedly fundamental for the Emilian singer-songwriter, which would lead him, more or less in full sail, toward the record-breaking album of his career — one that boasts a full 49 weeks on the "Tv Sorrisi e Canzoni" chart, eight of them at number one, and the title of best-selling album in Italy in 1992, with roughly 800,000 copies sold, the only one able to counter the Anglophone rise of Queen, U2, Elton John and Annie Lennox.

The songs from his earlier past are therefore crucial to the genesis, especially lyrically, of "Carboni." Starting with "Primavera," in fact the track that, more than any other, gathers and foreshadows the moods and pulses of an album that is a true gem, wedged as it is between the lightness of a chorus — chief among them the ultimate summer earworm, "Mare mare," which would fittingly win the twenty-ninth edition of Festivalbar hands down — and the release of a man with a "sick heart" in the presence of an angel suddenly descended from Heaven to take him dancing, in an incredible synapse of funk-disco sounds and lunar keyboards ("Baila Sad Jack").

"Carboni" is, first of all, a perfect album right from the opening. "Ci vuole un fisico bestiale", the record's lead single, lodges itself in your head instantly, with Mauro Gardella's lightning-fast, deliberately choked guitar solos, the irresistible groove driven by Luca Malaguti's bass, Malavasi's brilliant synth programming — never again as inspired as it is here — and the searing lyrics, which show for the very first time an irrepressible craving for health and wellbeing. The lyric, as is quite clear, is anything but lighthearted. Quite the opposite. And yet Carboni strikes a chord with practically everyone. Whether smokers or alcoholics, chronic ignoramuses or prim schoolteachers, it makes no difference. Everyone goes mad for the nation's Luca and his collective examination of conscience.

Next comes the bittersweet ballad about the (non) end of a relationship, "Le storie d'amore", in which hearts become "perfect boxes where you always find everything again." Just two tracks before making room for the album's masterpiece: the singalong tropical brass that opens "Mare mare" immortalizes the lazy emotion of a typical Italian summer, sultry and bored, with the underlying unease of the verse where the sun-drenched day by the sea gives way, reluctantly, to the coming of night ("Ma cosa son venuto a fare? Ho già un sonno da morire"), before surging with a key change that opens onto a chorus brimming with restless yearning ("Mare mare, ma sai che ognuno c'ha i suoi sogni da inseguire sì, per stare a galla e non affondare"). The song becomes a cross-generational anthem that spills out of radios, jukeboxes, TV sets and boomboxes on the beach, capturing the two speeds of that fleeting summer, between the shore and the clubs, and cutting across genres and social classes.

Listening to the album, we find ourselves holding postcards and Polaroids from the start of the decade with an unmistakably Italian flavour, amid the urban curses of aging yuppies, wary old ladies and "someone forced to shoot up in a corner of pain" ("La mia città"), amid unrepentant "mafia bosses" and "powerful men" who never change their ways ("Alzando gli occhi al cielo").

At times the album pierces the heart with a needle, following the emotional wave set by "Vieni a vivere con me", found on "Luca Carboni", here brought to full maturity in the overflowing, fleeting, tactile desires of "L'amore che cos'è", translated musically into soft, syncopated funk grooves ("Ma l'amore cosa fa? Può farci tutto ma non del male").

In the closing moments the perspective flips, as the singer-songwriter, in a lullaby underscored by keyboards and gospel choirs, gives voice to the stars, turning men into tiny ants questioning the heavens with "dreams locked inside the heart, clutched tight in their hands", dreams to be let go of ("Siamo le stelle del cielo").

"Carboni" defines the season of a country trying to hold onto forever the myth of the "Italian summer", from the economic boom of the 1950s and '60s to the hedonistic awakening of the 1980s, with the explosion of the disco phenomenon that followed the years of terrorism. Once again the axe was about to fall, this time in the form of Mani Pulite and the mafia maxi-trials, against the backdrop of wartime-like scenes surrounding the assassinations of judges Falcone and Borsellino. The country was heading toward stagnant economic growth and a crisis that remains unresolved to this day. Once again, Italy would never be quite the same, and Italian singer-songwriter music, even at its most carefree, was starting to sense it. The top two spots on the Sanremo 1992 chart went to two exquisitely delicate songs, the nostalgia of Luca Barbarossa's "Portami a ballare" and the bitterness of Mia Martini's "Gli uomini non cambiano". While newcomers 883 exploded with "Hanno ucciso l'uomo ragno" (Fri, 1992), produced by the Midas of the Milanese record industry Claudio Cecchetto, Francesco Baccini, following the runaway success of "Sotto questo sole" in 1990 with Ladri di Biciclette, wrote "Nomi e cognomi" (Cgd, 1992), a dark album recounting figures from Italian history such as Giulio Andreotti and Renato Curcio.

Meanwhile, Jovanotti was shaping his first turn toward singer-songwriter territory, moving from the sheer fun of "La mia moto" (Fri, 1989) and "Una tribù che balla" (Fri, 1991) to an altogether more authorial work like "Lorenzo 1992" (Fri, 1992) – which contains another summer hit, "Ragazzo fortunato" – where he tackles themes of political and social engagement. Jovanotti and Carboni, following their respective successes that year, would go on to share an autumn tour, documented on the anthology "Diario Carboni" (Bmg-Rca, 1993), one date of which was broadcast live on the historic Italian TV channel Videomusic.

But the strength of "Carboni" doesn't lie only in its irresistible hits and the melancholy poetry of its twilit imagery. Across nine nearly flawless songs, the Bolognese singer-songwriter comes to realize he has reached the peak of everything – of life and of his work – sensing the irreversibility of a time both private and shared, which Perturbazione would, some years later, describe as "a circle on a downward slope," made up of "one wait after another." "Carboni" will forever let us leave the city behind, sunglasses on and wind in our hair, heading toward the sea, our heads full of dense words that flow so effortlessly, in that special way so many artists today, first and foremost Tommaso Paradiso, try to imitate. Without, however, bothering to tell themselves any lies.

Ma il tempo se ne frega e va

Lui pensa solo a cambiarci l’età

Tempo che non hai pietà

Per le nostre indecisioni

E per tutti i nostri errori

You move on, and what you once liked you no longer like

What mattered, ah… no longer matters

But you barely give man the time to

To get a bit more confused

Tempo che non hai pietà

Maybe deep down, who knows

Leave everything as it is

Ride the wave of great music

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19/06/2022