The singer-songwriter, “is an album that smacks of humanity in a time when arrogance often prevails”
“I feel very represented by this album and I feel that it comes out at the right time. It is an album that smacks of humanity, of meetings, of exchanges, of travels”. Diodato talks about “So special”, his new album of unreleased songs to be released on March 24th for Carosello Records. An album with a strong sound identity, born to be played entirely by “flesh-and-blood musicians”, who manage to move from the intimacy of a piano and a voice to full-bodied and powerful arrangements. Diodato wrote, arranged and took care of the artistic direction while Tommaso Colliva, internationally renowned record producer and winner of a Grammy Award in 2015, worked on the production and mixing, and on the mastering by Giovanni Versari.
The recording sessions that led to its birth, which also included orchestral sections, were often made live, without further overdubs, especially as regards the songs in which the band sound emerges more. The album consists of ten tracks that represent ten moments of life, “looks at the world and dives into the inner depths to try to re-emerge with ten flowers that smell of life”. The disc opens with “Ci would take a miracle”, in which Diodato provides a snapshot of the strange times we live in, in which everyone feels they have to have their say and where arrogance often rules. The tracklist continues with the title track “So special”, a declaration on the importance of the ability to know how to discern the moments of life that are precious gifts that we could define as special. From the salvific awareness of the song that gives the album its title, we then move on to the process that leads us in a natural way to tie ourselves inextricably to a person who becomes the fulcrum of our existence, minutely described by the song “Ormai non c’eri che tu” . The album continues with “Che casino”, in which exploding music accompanies Diodato’s reflections, which tells the existential skein of a mind that tries to escape in search of ever new stimuli. “Sunglasses” collects the expectations of a lifetime, ours and those of the people who love and observe us (“this is like a photograph of me today”).
“Black hole” is the dive par excellence into man’s inner depths, it is the deepest push towards what is most dangerous, which at the same time attracts. The tracklist continues with “We have to meet”, it is almost a closely guarded secret and an awareness shared only by those who are an integral part of a story, to the detriment of those who think they know more. “If you want me” is an immersion in the changing matter of desire, a successful attempt to trace its chiaroscuro, to outline the jolts of a burning flame.
With “Let go” Diodato examines the reasons of the head and the heart to compose a light-hearted dialogue in which, in a subversion of the canonical roles, the head invites the heart to abandon itself to the pleasures of love, despite the previous beatings. Diodato’s musical journey ends with a white flag, “Come to laugh at me”, in which a soul sings that, bouncing between TV series, food and excerpts from everyday life, realizes it wants to share everything with the only person who initially he wished to forget.
To dress the cover of his fourth album of unreleased Diodato relied once again on Paolo De Francesco, with whom he had already collaborated on the previous album “Che vita marvelous”, who created an artwork freely inspired by the Japanese artist’s “Flowers” Tetsumi Kudo, whom Diodato had seen at the Venice Art Biennale last year.
“Those flowers were so powerful, so evocative, that they seemed to enclose the projection of desires, fears, metamorphoses of the human soul. They were what I had been looking for for a long time to visually express what I was recording during those months. I then photographed some details of the work and showed them to Paolo De Francesco thinking those shots themselves could be the cover of the new album. He asked me for some time to try to think about it and a few weeks later he sent me what became the cover. I thought he had simply reworked one of my shots graphically and instead I later discovered that he had created two crepe paper flowers, coloring them with liquid watercolors and photographing them. All the artwork is composed of photographs of details of his creation,” Diodato tells about the birth of the album artwork.
As per tradition, “So special” (Carosello Records) was anticipated by the release of the homonymous song, a ballad, a piano that vibrates in a room and a voice that vibrates with it, with the only need to tell. Authenticity, emotion, care and passion are the aspects that the song has unveiled on the album of the same name, which will be available in CD, vinyl, autographed vinyl formats exclusively on Amazon and in a special deluxe box in a limited and numbered edition containing CDs with artwork white, vinyl with white artwork and different graphics, 2 sheets of stickers that recall the flowers on the cover in different sizes and two high quality prints, one of which made by photographer Alessio Albi.
The album “Così speciali” comes after the extraordinary success of the album “What a wonderful life” (certified platinum), one of the most followed recording projects of recent years and among the most awarded in the history of Italian music, anticipated by “Fai Rumore” (Carosello Records), triple platinum certified song with which Diodato triumphed in 2020 at the 70th Sanremo Festival and with which he performed in 2022 at the Eurovision Song Contest in Turin, giving the whole world an iconic and unforgettable performance. Also part of the album “What a wonderful life” is the song of the same name – gold disc – part of the soundtrack of “La Dea Fortuna” by Ferzan Özpetek, which earned him the David di Donatello award for best original song, the Nastro d’argento and Ciak d’oro, and the great success “Until we disappear” (certified gold record).
With this album Diodato once again implements the perfect union between his introspective, solid and intense writing style, capable of telling the truth about each of us, and the search for a dynamic and never predictable sound, now a stylistic hallmark of the songwriter.
Diodato keeps his promise to prefer meeting and exchanging with his audience and from April he will be the protagonist of an in-store tour that will take him to Milan, Rome, Turin, Bari, Taranto and Palermo: on 24 March he will be in Milan (6.00 pm :30 – the Feltrinelli Piazza Duomo); on 25 March in Rome (6.00 pm – the Feltrinelli Appia); on 27 March in Turin (6.00 pm – la Feltrinelli Off Topic); on 28 March in Bari (6.00 pm @ laFeltrinelli via Melo), on 29 March in Taranto (8.00 pm – Mondadori at Spazioporto) and on 30 March in Palermo (6.00 pm @ laFeltrinelli via Cavour).
After returning from the tour across the border in autumn 2021 which took him to Europe and the United States, Diodato is back live with ten dates, produced and organized by Otr Live, which will bring the singer-songwriter to the most prestigious clubs in the main European cities, in the spring 2023. These are the dates that will see the singer-songwriter perform in Italy, Spain, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic in 2023: April 15 at the Hall club in Padua, April 20 at the Alcatraz in Milan, April 22 at the Teatro della Concordia in Turin, on April 27 at the Estragon in Bologna, on May 11 at Clamores in Madrid, on May 18 at the Maschinenhaus in Berlin, on May 20 at the Café de la Danse in Paris, on May 26 at the Bitterzoet club in Amsterdam , on May 27 in Prague at Palàc Akropolis and on July 27 in Rome at the Cavea Auditorium Parco della Musica, following the shift of the initially scheduled date to April 29 at the Atlantico club.
Source-www.adnkronos.com