Lucio Corsi might have a cold. Or perhaps the line crackles at times, but when we feel on a November morning that we haven't yet understood what it is, but only that it has made everyone ill, the thing would (unfortunately) happen like a bean. I don't even ask him, I remain in my fantasy. The coincidence would be the one with the video of his latest single, You are the morningwhich is a love song that actually takes place in a school but is then told with images that are more like a B movie where they fight each other. All for a cold in the elevator in an anonymous Fantozzian company.
At a certain point Carlo Verdone appears – in the video, not in the phone call. If the partnership between the freakiest singer-songwriter in Italy and a master of comedy seems like a strange fairy tale itself, one of those that are told to leave friends speechless, you haven't yet seen the third season of Life as Carloavailable in full streaming on Paramount+ since last week. There the game is reversed: at a certain point, in the comedy series in which Verdone plays himself (we told you about the first season here) Lucio Corsi appears. And also You are the morning.
They have a mission, descended from above: to save Sanremo, or rather, the musical tastes of Italians, or rather, the edition of the Festival which the actor was fictitiously placed in charge of as artistic director. Because the Maremma musician is someone who flies like a kite: unattainable, but tied to the earth by an almost invisible but tenacious thread. It is the race that remains on the ground sung by Eugenio Montale in Falsetto: when the illusions are gone, you can only sit back, preferably still, to observe reality and preserve its stories, its antics, the things that don't add up. And put them in a poem, or a song.
But not to, quoting another poet, Patrizia Cavalli, really change the world. Poems won't change the world, songs might equally not. Maybe the mistake lies in the article: the poems, the songs could change a world. Everyone's, even reality, just by turning it a little, making it seen from another side. Who knows if it's too much for Sanremo. In the fiction of Life as Carlowe mean. Because, returning to earth, Corsi has no doubts on the topic: like all artists, he has a lot of doubts.
Meanwhile, after the last album of 2023 (People who dream) we start again from the roots, which in truth have never been lost: the Maremma, a new album to close, the desire to learn to write even more attached to the earth, to tell stories that fly ever higher. And also from my grandmother's restaurant, which looks a bit like an old Milanese trattoria.
Photo: Francis Delacroix
On the cover of the piece there's you cooking, the video winks at slasher movies, and then You are the morning it is a love song set among the memories of a school.
I think the beauty is that everything can go wherever it wants. So a single song is expressed in three different ways. They are tools that stimulate me, these different forms of expression, they set my imagination in motion. On the video specifically I worked with Tommaso Ottomano, who directed it and with whom I co-wrote the song, we have been working together for years and we are like brothers. We said to ourselves that the text was already so romantic that there was no need to indulge it in the video, we needed something to go against it. The song will go its own way. The video is another thing, it's like bringing a song live, it's another situation. In short, we wanted to demolish it, destroy it.
And in the end Carlo Verdone kills you all.
Yes, he made us laugh. The point of the video was to recreate a phantom company, and put him as the phantom director. It all takes place in an elevator with a bottom-up path while the patatrac happens. There was certainly also the intention of using this lever to desecrate, to show human life under a tragicomic lens, because in the end that's how it is. All corporate impositions are demolished by a cold.
And the kitchen?
Those are photos taken by Francis Delacroix in my grandmother and family's restaurant, where I grew up. They've had it all their lives, for me it's an environment very linked to the song, that place is part of me. So I took up another job, which is what I do and is a musician, but it was a way to cross paths. This is why I'm cooking but stirring in a pot with a guitar neck.
But the song also sounds close to me People who dream. There are those who stay awake, those who don't…
You are the morning it's quite close to the last album, which is ultimately from 2023. So I think there are some thematic similarities. In reality, on this song I worked much more with my feet on the ground, trying to anchor myself to the ground. I didn't want to tell something that was extra-ordinary, that's it. But it's something I'm learning to do. Ivan Graziani, Paolo Conte, Lucio Dalla… talk about extraordinary things with earthly images. It is a difficult and fascinating art.
You have often said that your vision of reality is disenchanted, down to earth. But then you praise the dream and those who get lost in it.
The dimension of music lies elsewhere. Outside of that, I find an attachment to reality, to what surrounds us, to be fundamental. Music allows us to transform it, and we shouldn't fall into the trap of really telling it as it is. It's a thin line between what needs to be kept and what needs to be changed in a song. It's also a thing of life, in my opinion. You have to keep your feet on the ground, then on stage you can transform yourself, be something else, forget about my life. Out of there, however, it is better not to have illusions, not to strike a pose, not to believe oneself to be someone who knows who. I also find it important to collect the stories that are around us, put them in songs, make them become part of my childhood as happened with You are the morning. In fact, it is a childhood that was at times real, that is, mine, at times taken from others. But everything is collected in real life down to earth. However, I often see the opposite: on stage we tend towards normality today, and in life we tend to make ourselves gods, superheroes, for nothing. For me we need to do the opposite.
Photo: Francis Delacroix
The numbers say you haven't done many love songs so far.
A love song can be about the waves, about the wind. There doesn't have to be humans. This right here is a love song for the chorus, about the first time, the first experience. But also and above all for the time that passes within the song, that is where I find love, much more than in the physical act. The sides that make it a love song are the time that passes, learning something about the world, looking at the olive trees that stand still with the net around them for the olives. Bearing the same name as my grandfather who I practically never saw. Here I find the definition of a love song.
Is it romantic love?
Yes. Romantic love can come in a thousand ways.
Listen, how's things going in Milan now?
Look, I'm leaving her. I'm going back to Maremma, I'll record the new album and I'll base myself there, I'll study. The province is important to me. It is often seen in a negative light, even just the term is derogatory. Instead, it is in those places that we begin to search and find new forms of expression. Because there is boredom there, which goes hand in hand with peace. There isn't much difference between the two. Learning to be bored as a child is fundamental, it's done in those places. But then the province is full of interesting, down-to-earth stories. Stories of people and trees, of those who are anchored to the ground but climb high to peer into the distance, even with their imagination. They imagine without having seen. This is fascinating. This not knowing but still trying to grow upwards to imagine something.
However, it seems to me that things are happening in Maremma, that there is excitement.
It's not easy to say. It is a wild place, and it is an important feature, to be preserved. Both in terms of characters and environment, it is dusty, there are cowboys who are cowboys. It's not the green Tuscany you imagine on postcards, it looks more like a barren field with tornadoes kicking up debris. Tractors chased by herons that eat worms lifted from the earth – these herons are a bit like the guardian angels of tractors. Magic comes from the low concentration of people. Even compared to the other side of Italy, at the same height, Romagna, there the people are close and they do their best to bring others from outside, they attract, they make people feel good. We are more pristine. Scrub hills and wild boars and a few houses.
Let's get to the series: how did it go?
I was called by Carlo just like that, out of nowhere, for the role. I was pleased, I thought about it for a moment because it was something outside of my profession. But having had my first scenes in front of the camera with Carlo Verdone was a great honor. It was also nice on an educational level, the camera has a different eye than the ones I'm used to, which is that of live people. You interact with them, the camera is cold, it doesn't reveal anything. A whole other kettle of fish.
And you are “elected” to save Sanremo and the musical tastes of Italians. This crown of new promise has also been placed upon you in real life.
I don't care much, you know. You have to look first of all at what you do, you have to be proud of it and not find compromises. Everything else doesn't matter. I want to be happy with the songs I make, the crowns are all fake, even less so. We're talking about music, not something that's really important.
Sanremo, today: what does it mean for you?
Over the years, artists that I respect a lot have gone to Sanremo, Dalla, Rino Gaetano, Vasco, and at the same time, artists that I respect a lot haven't gone, so it's difficult. However, this is a Sanremo that is far from me, which I experienced in recovery. It's a very large window, and to be in the window you have to be a mannequin. Few have been capable of not being so. And so also from here, as in the series, the internal struggles of those who want to go, then don't want to, etc. It's an internal battle.
Another battle is the one around the word “young”.
Ah-ha! Well yes. I have one foot in the grave for example. A word that is really too broad. I'm 31 years old, how can I be young? Then I don't like this story that time passes. Perhaps we use the term improperly also because we tend not to take young people seriously, but we should. We should trust. Maybe it's something my family passed on to me. When I started making music they never entered my sphere even though I was only 18 years old. They knew that I knew things that they didn't know, they recognized my expertise.
You return to Maremma as an old man: what will we hear?
The songs are there, I have to record the ones that are missing. You are the morning it will be part of the album. I looked for the biggest change in the words, in the texts, trying to tell fantastic stories, not everyday ones, but with everyday terms, which are found on the floor. I wanted to have other ways to tell things in music, I wanted to talk more about people than fairy tales. That's to say, people: going back to my family's restaurant, they have one from '59, I've always seen that food brings us closer together. I found this dimension in a restaurant in Niguarda, it is an oasis, a point of contact between people without frills or fluff. Which then always means anchored to reality, for me. Then it becomes an inspiration to eat with Mr. Mario, known as Millelire, who tells me about his day, so to speak. I like this, this makes places. However, I want to finish the album soon because I want to play again.
I would like to know more about Mario Millelire.
He's a gentleman with a white beard, he looks like Marx or Verdi, I eat there practically every day. I love him, both him and the other characters in the restaurant. Once I played at Alcatraz he even came to visit me backstage. Then there's Mario the taxi driver, Giusy the cook, the butcher, the neighborhood pharmacist… I like having these people around. It makes me feel at home.
