The new album is out and the live presentation in the clubs starts on November 10th. “Sanremo? I’m busy in the clubs until December”
A ‘Souvenir’ album, of moments that remain while you are busy living. “A super autobiographical record“, underlines Emma Marrone, who collects in the album released tomorrow, “9 stories, 9 songs, 9 pieces of a puzzle that represent all my facets”. ‘Souvenir’, precisely, of a long journey that will continue, because the The artist is already working on the sequel. “I took my time – she says, explaining why the album arrives 4 years after her last album of unreleased songs, ‘Fortuna’ – I wanted each song to have an identity and importance. Filler songs for an album don’t interest me, I don’t like them and they’re not even in line with what’s happening in the music and recording world, where we now work song by song. So I don’t know when it will be released but I’m already working on the second chapter“.
And to those who ask him if he hasn’t kept some material to propose a new release soon, perhaps returning to Sanremoshe replies: “Although on a marketing level it would be perfect, I want to remember that I was in the competition two years ago and I went out of personal desire. My father was already in quite a bad situation (the artist lost his father in September of 2022, ed.) and I wanted to give him a moment of happiness. Thanks to Amadeus I competed with ‘Every time it’s like this’ but I didn’t do any type of post-festival promotion.”
Thus, he underlines, at this moment “there is this record” which “is the snapshot, frozen in space and time, of another chapter of my life. It collects the images, the colours, the emotions felt and experienced in these last years”. Emma is co-author of 7 out of 9 songs, written with Paolo Antonacci and Davide Simonetta but also with Lazza (who is also present in a feat in ‘Amore Cane’), with Jacopo Ettore, with Nesli, with Francesco Katoo Cattitti, with Federica Abbate and Franco 126 and by Andrea Bonomo. The production also bears different signatures in the different songs: Davide Simonetta, Drillionaire, Simon Says, Katoo, Zef, Luca Faraone. “The production of the album brings with it all the acoustic baggage of my best part – says Emma – it plays with the contemporary sounds of electronics without distorting what has been built so far. It puts sound research at the service of my new expressive nuances, to create something new while always remaining true to myself”.
“This album – explains Emma – is the result of waiting, also of the covid pause. I am for the study of changes. So I took the one that again suited my change. It remains a familiar record, you can recognize it, there isn’t a total upheaval of the artist to please new trends, but I certainly understood where to position myself in the changing scene”, she says.
Each song is a discussion in itself but, explains Emma, ”there are different concepts that return in different songs on the album, which complement each other, some songs are the continuation of others or another point of view on the same horizon. ‘Dog love’ is linked to ‘Sentimental’ which is linked to ‘Indigo’, three different ways of telling the same love story: poetic, aggressive and shameless, melancholic.”
Thus, in ‘Mezzo mondo’ Emma talks about “getting lost to find yourself” (a song that “highlights the desire to breathe new music”), in ‘Let’s start from the end’ there is “the perfect synthesis” of her new personal taste ( “the meeting between pop and urban”), in ‘Amore cane’ there is a musical experiment (“my voice is different, thin and light, and is put at the service of this love poem written with a knife between the teeth”, Lazza’s next intervention, “tells another point of view of the same story, and makes it a transversal song, which can reach everyone”, in ‘Sentimentale’ we find the most rock Emma (“I written by imagining it already in its live performance, here I am shameless and brazen and I represent all those women who awaken from the torpor of loves gone bad”), in ‘Carne viva’ there is the request to listen (“in a world in which everyone does nothing but talk, and talk, and talk, even and above all about what they don’t know”), in ‘Indigo’ there is the closing of the circle of malaise (“it’s a ‘sad’ but hypnotic love song and deep”).
‘Short hair’ and ‘Interval’ deserve a separate discussion. The first is, by the artist’s own admission, “la manifesto song, I am also a feminist manifesto but I prefer to talk about coherence with my values than about feminism”. “This song gives voice to my most songwriting side. There is me, my battles, the bitter pills that I have had and still have to swallow every day, like many women. But the implication is positive, because now I fully understand everything I really deserve, and I don’t hide it. In fact, I’ll actually make a list.” The second is dedicated to his father Rosario, who passed away just over a year ago. Here Emma says “anger gives way to sweetness and acceptance”. “When my dad left, unfortunately I wasn’t with him. At his invitation I hadn’t canceled a work commitment, thinking I’d be able to come back to say goodbye to him. That wasn’t the case and this had generated great anger in me. Then, even with this song, I processed this pain and I understood that basically I had done what he had asked of me and what he had always taught me, without giving up on leaving”.
The father’s death inevitably marked a milestone: “In the last year it’s as if I’ve gotten four degrees. Some things you fully realize when they end“. Emma now feels in a moment “of great serenity: I am at peace with myself and with the world”, she underlines. And even the relationship with the haters on the web no longer affects her as it once did: “Before, I responded, ending up giving a gift to these people the 10 minutes of visibility they aspired to. Now I don’t do it anymore but I smile. I might as well go and have a beer with the haters,” she quips.
After the release of the album, Emma will be involved in promotion until December that will see her in close contact with her audience. “In November and December I will be busy presenting it live,” she says. She will do so with 18 club dates, titled ‘Souvenir in da club’, starting November 10. “The idea came to me after having had a lot of fun improvising in an evening of ‘Spaghetti Unplugged’ (a live evening dedicated to live performances and jam sessions by emerging artists, ed.) and we thought it would be nice to recreate that atmosphere for present the new songs”, explains Emma. The ‘Souvenir Flagship Store’ created in the Mondadori Duomo bookshop in Milan is also dedicated to fans, where until 21 October it is possible to find a space entirely dedicated to Emma and the freshly released album, where fans will be able to meet the artist and compare notes with each other, as well as purchasing the new album, also in an exclusive honey-coloured version with an autographed card and dedication, and a series of products – in limited and exclusive editions – inspired by ‘Souvenir’ and designed by Emma specifically for them.
Emma will also meet her audience at two copy signing events outside Milan: Saturday 14 October in Campania at the Mondadori Megastore in Marcianise (starting at 3.30pm) and Sunday 15 October in Rome at the Mondadori Bookstore Cola in Rienzo (starting at 2.30pm) . Waiting to understand if perhaps the announcement of a return to the Ariston Theater in Sanremo will arrive in December.
Source-www.adnkronos.com