Anticipated by the individual Tower of Babel, Paolo Santo Superstar (Early Years / Atlantic Records / Warner Music Italy) is the first official album by Paolo Santo which, after collaborations with Tananai And Davide Simonetta in the song Miss Oklahoma and with Annalisa in Poisonedreturns with a work conceived as a microworld.
Listening to the seven tracks contained within it seems to be in front of a screen, a painting. But more than from the world of cinema or art, Paolo Santo Superstar draws inspiration from the rock opera form, ideally recalling Jesus Christ Superstarbut moving the center towards a much more personal dimension.
In fact, the album returns a musical portrait of the singer-songwriter and his artistic vision, with each song opening a scene, a passage, a vision.
“Paolo Santo Superstar”: the title and the cover
The visual imagery that accompanies the release of the album is full of symbols and references. Among these we cannot fail to mention the Tower of Babel present in the graphic cover: a figure that goes beyond the sacred story to talk about identity, language and self-construction.
The title, however, overturns the very concept of “superstar”: not a distant icon, but a shared human condition. Paolo Santo Superstar in fact, it was born from the idea that every person can be one when they build something authentic and complete.
Paolo Santo: THE TRACKLIST of the album
Here, below, we report the tracklist of Paolo Santo Superstar:
- Bolognese Spaghetti
- The Crisis After the Three
- The Desire
- Tower of Babel
- The Great Fire in Via Rialto
- Zombie
- She's a Maniac
PAOLO SANTO, “PAOLO SANTO SUPERSTAR”: LISTENING GUIDE, AUTHORS AND PRODUCERS
Paolo Santo Superstar develops as a work in seven movements, an emotional and visionary journey in which each piece represents a fragment of the microworld constructed by the artist.
Between autobiography, allegory and cinematic imagery, the album thus traverses desires, relationships, illusions and falls, always maintaining a deeply personal gaze on the world.
SPAGHETTI BOLOGNESE
Produced by Salamone
Additional Production: Davide Simonetta
Written by Paul Antonacci
Made up of Paul Antonacci, Placido Salamone, Davide Simonetta
Arranged and played by Placido Salamone
Bolognese Spaghetti opens the album like an overture: the entrance into a possible world, in the place where Paolo Santo he would really like to live. Bologna becomes an imagined and sentimental city, suspended between love stories, art academies and butterflies that cross the rooms. It is a declaration of intent that introduces the entire universe of the album: an open window on the artist's world, observed with desire and melancholy.
THE CRISIS AFTER THE THREE
Produced by Simonetta
Written by Paul Antonacci, Davide Simonetta
Made up of Paul Antonacci, Davide Simonetta
Arranged and played by Davide Simonetta
The crisis after the three it tells a fragmented story, almost like a film made of broken images. At the center of the song is a betrayal that occurred during a beach holiday with friends, but the story soon turns into a broader allegory.
THE'vanilla holocaust evoked in the text mixes tragedy and sweetness, staging emotional dramas that seem enormous but which, when faced with real life, reveal all their fragility.
THE WANT
Produced by Simonetta
Additional Production: Salamone
Written by Paul Antonacci, Davide Simonetta, Placido Salamone, Edwyn Roberts
Made up of Paul Antonacci, Davide Simonetta
Arranged and played by Placido Salamone, Davide Simonetta
The album here enters the territory of adolescent love: tender, instinctive and inevitably cruel. The song tells the story of the birth of a feeling during a party, restoring that impulsive innocence in which desire and ferocity coexist without contradictions.
TOWER OF BABEL
Produced by Simonetta, Salamone
Written by Paul Antonacci
Made up of Paul Antonacci, Davide Simonetta, Placido Salamone
Arranged and played by Davide Simonetta, Placido Salamone
Strings and programming: Carmelo Patti
Tower of Babel addresses the issue of incommunicability. Two souls continually try to get closer without really being able to understand each other, transforming every dialogue into a new distance.
The biblical reference thus becomes a metaphor for a relationship destined to crack under the weight of misunderstanding. But within the song there also survives a tension towards reconciliation: the stubborn search for a new language to finally be able to find each other again.
THE BIG FIRE IN VIA RIALTO
Produced by Simonetta
Written by Paul Antonacci, Davide Simonetta
Made up of Paul Antonacci, Davide Simonetta
At this point the album reaches its poetic and conceptual manifesto. Inspired by the imagery of the burning of the vanities, the song transports that symbolic fire to contemporary Bologna, transforming Via Rialto into the center of an almost provocative vision.
Here the ambiguous heart of the concept of “superstar” emerges: an exaltation that continually oscillates between irony, desire for greatness and self-destruction. The song showcases vanity and the need for recognition, asking what it really means to feel special in a world that seems to ignore you.
ZOMBIE
Produced by Simonetta
Additional Production: Salamone
Written by Paul Antonacci, Placido Salamone, Davide Simonetta
Made up of Paul Antonacci, Davide Simonetta, Placido Salamone, Sam Ruffillo
The piece was born inside a deconsecrated church in Bologna and develops as a continuous reversal of perspective. Initially, it seems to tell the story of a devastated and unattainable female figure, but progressively the narrative is reversed: the “zombie” is the protagonist himself. The production takes on a central role, communicating with the voice until its final explosion, one of the emotional peaks of the entire album.
SHE'S A MANIAC
Produced by Simonetta
Written by Paul Antonacci, Edwyn Roberts, Davide Simonetta
Made up of Paul Antonacci, Edwyn Roberts, Davide Simonetta, Placido Salamone Arranged and played by Davide Simonetta
Strings and programming: Carmelo Patti
A “space sex love song” which closes the opera and which intertwines love, comedy and tragedy in a succession of cinematographic images, culminating in a poignant refrain.
Musically the song looks at certain atmospheres of the best Italian pop art, taking inspiration from Luca Carboniand then opens into a string finale that accompanies the definitive exit from the world of the record. It is the moment when the narrator's mask falls: the most intimate, fragile and emotionally exposed piece of Paolo Santo Superstar.
