This release, Sounds of Firenze, ’83, is really an epilogue, more than anything. This is in fact the first playlist I’ve curated where the dominant problem isn’t finding songs that fit, but rather, songs that meet quality requirements.
For gone are the European legends that dominated the post-war scene. Dalida, suffering from severe depression, retreats from the stage during the ’80s, eventually taking her own life in 1987. Charles Aznavour continues to tour, but mainly performs music in the early swing style of the ‘50s and ‘60s, as a sort of golden oldies act. Mina gives up public appearances in 1978, and though she continues to release new music, her music gradually fades from relevance after her last great hit, 1982’s “Morirò per te”. Lucio Battisti joins her in seclusion, releasing fewer and fewer albums as time goes on. Although not quite the recluse Mina is, Ornella Vanoni too fades from the limelight throughout the decade, as do so many of the postwar era’s greatest stars.
In the end, who’s left sur scene? As it happens, no one. No one replaces these legends — all we get are serious artists like Alain Chamfort or France Gall, Loredana Bertè, who, while talented, cannot equal the greats of years past. Otherwise, the scene is bereft of any serious contenders, being filled with teen idols.
But the problem isn’t just one of teen idols and dance music replacing serious pop. The rot runs deeper, to the decline and fall of the entire European cultural scene. This is it — they’ve run out of road.
In 1959, Rome, the city of Marcello Mastroianni, Mina, and Fellini, was the center of the anni dolce vita. In 1966, Paris, between Derrida, Un homme et une femme, and Francoise Hardy, was the scene of a new wave breaking. By 1976, a distinctly European style of music and film had emerged throughout the continent, from Bruxelles to Barcelona. Yet even this last development of European culture seems a bit lacking — what’s so revolutionary about ABBA or Suspiria, beyond a certain culty kitsch?
The cause of this cultural vitiation was and remains very simple — the ascendance of the Anglosphere in Western culture. Already split along linguistic lines, the smaller domestic markets of Europe were gradually deprived of audiences for European-language cultural products, leading to a vicious cycle — lower investment, lower audiences, and lower-quality new talent.
This phenomenon is most dramatically illustrated by the cinema industry. From the ’40s through the ‘60s, the Neorealist, Hollywood on the Tiber, Commedia all’Italiana, and Spaghetti Western movements produced critically acclaimed and internationally marketable films, creating masterpieces from Sciuscià to 8½, Divorzia all’Italiana and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Yet by 1970, established directors like Bernardo Bertolucci were forced to co-produce films like Il conformista with a consortium of West German, French, and Italian studios; by 1976, even legendary figures like Fellini had to tighten their budgets when Fellini’s studio decided it could not compete on the same level as Hollywood — there simply wasn’t a market.
By 1983, then, it was becoming increasingly evident that European culture was on the wane. It’s exactly this sense of decline that Matia Bazar sings of in 1983's “Vacanze romane”, referencing the lost days of 1954’s Roman Holiday and 1960’s La dolce vita, when Italian cinema, music, and culture was at the top of the world:
Roma, dove sei? Eri con me
Oggi prigione tu, prigioniera io
Roma, antica città, ora vecchia realtà
Non ti accorgi di me
E non sai che pena mi faiMa piove il cielo sulla città
Tu, con il cuore nel fango
L’oro e l’argento, le sale da te
Paese che non ha più campanelliPoi, dolce vita che te ne vai
Sul Lungotevere in festa
Concerto di viole e mondanità
Profumo tuo di vacanze romane
Rome, where are you? You were with me
Today, prisoner you, prisoner me
Rome, ancient city, now aged reality
You don’t notice me
And you don’t know how much I pity you
But the heavens rain upon the city
You, with your heart in the mud
Gold and silver, tea-houses
Country that no longer has glories
Then, dolce vita that you’re leaving
Along the festive Lungotevere
Viola concerts and superficiality
You smell of Roman holidays
— “Vacanze romane” | Matia Bazar — Tango (1983)
This loss of direction is evident in the sounds present in this playlist as well. While still inevitably including some element of European melodies and traditions, much of it is imitative of American dance-pop. Francois Valery’s “Ella danse Marie” is practically a clone of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”, while Loredana Bertè journeys to New York to hang out with Andy Warhol and record her 1981 album, “Made in Italy”. Even Mina, the greatest of all Italian singers, decides to record a song explicitly intended for the American market, 1982’s “Morirò per te”, with almost all its lyrics (save the titular refrain) in English. (She succeeded in placing in the Billboard Top 100 Dance charts.)
But even in its imitation, there is still something to celebrate here. In its brash and bright dance-pop grooves, it signals a renewal, that Europe’s spirits, if not its artistic traditions, are back. For it was in the ’80s that Europe recovered from the ’70s blight of stagflation and social strife. And nowhere was this more vivid than in Italy, where the domestic terrorism of the Red Brigades gradually wound down, as the economy rebounded in what was termed ‘il Sorpasso’ — where Italy surpassed the UK in GDP per capita.
As Italy boomed once again, something peculiar happened. The ‘riflusso nel privato’ — the ‘return to the private’, saw youth, once activated by the intense social conflicts of the anni di piombo, disengage from politics, embracing consumerism and Americanism. Subcultures like the paninari obsessed over New Wave music, American designer fashions, and fast food (the first McDonald’s opened in Milano in 1986) and steadfastly refusing any sort of political commitment, left, right, or center.
While it would not last, with the Italy’s eventual decline into political and economic sclerosis, it’s this renewed devil-may-care confidence that lends itself to the swaggering dance-pop of the era. The entire playlist is intended to be music for dancing, for strutting down a Florentine street, suited in pastels and booted in Chelseas, Persol 649s on, as one does in a particularly ’80s edition of Pitti Uomo.
It’s a word that defines this playlist, it’s “huge”. Check out the gigantic, absolutely irresistible dance-pop riffs that power Lucio Dalla’s “Washington”, Cristophe Laurent’s “Nuits brésiliennes”, and Lucio Battisti’s “Arrivederci a questa sera”; even the relatively calm tracks, like Louis Chedid’s “Chanson pour une emmerdeuse”, exhibit a charmingly debonair swagger that just invites you to get on that dance floor. Typical Italian hallmarks remain — note the strings on Mina’s “Il cigno dell’amore”, and the chitarra and pseudo-xylophone on Ornella Vanoni’s “Rabbia, libertà, fantasia”. But they’re now joined by American hallmarks — the drum machines and gated reverb of Genesis-era pop appears on Jane Birkin’s “Haine pour aime”, rap verses (!) make their mark on Oro’s “Sasà”, and the hottest horns you’ll ever hear on this side of the Atlantic light up Loredana Bertè’s “Notte che verrà”.
Yes, it is hollow. Yes, it is commercial. But honestly, sometimes, who cares? Simply put: why not? After all, sometimes, as Mina sings on her swan song:
I feel like walking
Without my sorrows
I feel like walking down the streets in my new world
Like a daring fellowI feel like dancing
With every soldier
I feel like catching stars with all the boys that fill
Every night’s corner— “Morirò per te” | Mina — Italiana Vol. 1 (1982)
And that’s all the playlisting stuff from me for a while! Ciao ciao!
