Morgan returns to the world of major record labels after 12 years and does so naturally in his own way. So he calls a press conference at the Milan headquarters of Warner, the label with which he has made an agreement “for a far-reaching project”, except that the appointment set with the journalists has no characteristics of a press conference. Flanked by Luca De Gennaro, he first gets interviewed retracing his entire career – musical, television, literary and experimental in every artistic field – and then leads those present through the most disparate digressions, which however in the end find a single common denominator in one characteristic: the “cultural protest” that aims at “restoring the humanistic values that this society has lost in favor of technocracy”.
Perhaps this is the only way to explain this latest change of direction that led him to sign for the same record company that only a few months ago he accused of being the head of a “gang” that controlled X Factor. And even during the meeting, when they point it out to him, he doesn't digress: “I don't agree with how certain things are handled.” So why did he agree to work with those who protested? It's a question of people. When he wrote burps (the piece brought to the last concert of the First of May) «in the notes of the iPad, I strummed a music similar to A judge by De André and I sent it to my friend Pico Cibelli (president of Warner Music Group, ed.) who replied: “It's a hit”. From there the threads of the relationship were re-tied: «It's nice that Cibelli didn't place himself in opposition, but with an inclusive attitude. I love the record industry, it's nice to return to an environment that deals with songs. I'm going back to making “shit music”, that is, to dialogue with songs like those of today that in reality aren't because they neglect harmony, they don't have interesting chords, like trap which is all based on No Woman, No Cry by Bob Marley.”
But what has he done all this time? Lots of things, but above all «I studied, composed, listened little because in these years I preferred dissemination and research. But I wrote a song a day, I have 18 albums of unreleased songs ready». A huge repertoire, the result of «a journey of mine disconnected from reality, where I didn't listen to the radio, I preserved myself like a mummy, I became a museum, and today I am a sort of alien, both for myself and for those who visit me. Guided tours need to be organized», he jokes, but not too much.
In the long chat, interrupted by an analysis of the choreography during his participation in dancing with the Stars and from a poem set to music on the texts of the poet Pasquale Panella, he recalls having «dedicated himself to the word in graphics and video, in fact today I am a grapho-linguist. I believe it is a subject that encompasses many things, such as dialogues in smartphone chats where a kind of hermeticism returns. If a university chair could be established I would apply, as it was for Umberto Eco's semiology courses». There is no shortage of TV, from Milly Carlucci's program to X Factoralways with music as the protagonist. But from October he will return to the small screen with his own program, StraMorganwhich will alternate during the week in the second evening of Rai 3.
Returning to work with Warner, however, Morgan assures that «burps it's the first song, but I'm under contract and this involves a far-reaching project conceived in terms of singles first and not albums”. Also because, he adds, “for me it's all new, I'm returning to a different discography and doing it with a piece like burpswhich is absurdly absurd, which lasts two minutes when usually my songs last from 5 to 40 minutes, I'm happy because unlike many of my peers who are nostalgic, I want to confront myself with this new world to bring my “museum” to the new generations”. But it is not a given that, at a certain point, an album can be published: “If it comes out, it will be a protest, revolutionary. In fact, I warn you that the second song to be released will be called Complain».
His return to a major, however, does not seem to be limited to the production of his own songs. It is no coincidence that he has already been spotted in the Instagram stories of trapper Tony Boy (is featured on the deluxe edition of Sadturs & Kiid's No Regular Music alongside Bello Figo, Artie 5ive and more, ed.) and explains that he worked on songs in collaboration with other artists: «I was involved, they invited me to the studio for some piano sessions where I was free to improvise, then they took everything and turned it into a trap piece, but I started from a Chopin prelude. As I was saying, I'm an alien who experimentally inserts himself into this current discography and it's nice to mix generations».
He reveals that «I will do a featuring with Achille Lauro and Chiello, a protest song of mine». Here is the key word that comes back again: «I always protest. A protest that is not political. Doing it like in France against the right is something already heard, that the system itself foresees. Instead a cultural power is different, it has at its center the interest of restoring humanistic values that this society has lost in favor of technocracy. Against the hegemony of the market that uses numbers against quality, the laws of profit against gratification and merit».
Of the change of words of Sincere he says that «the record companies didn't understand that people wanted those verses, everyone was singing it and in America they would have transformed it into a recording project. It was a show, what else?». So he has no problem reaching out again to Bugo who has sung him for defamation for his post-Sanremo 2020 statements, a charge from which he was acquitted yesterday: «I would like to find peace with him, also because if we did a feat we could fill San Siro». He doesn't rule out a return to Sanremo, after the change of artistic direction from Amadeus to Carlo Conti: «I dialogue with everyone, even with them, and I think I could participate again. Who wouldn't want to?». And he closes the “press conference” by playing a piece from the album written together with Pasquale Panella, which at this point is on stand by («but I would like it to come out») which is entitled Lie and garden. Perhaps the best metaphor of his entire hyperbolic artistic career.
