The first episode of has been released on YouTube SPOT – THE PODCASTthe new format hosted by Michele Monina And Massimiliano Longodirector and founder of All Music Italia. Guest of the debut episode Michele Braviwhich is told without filters between the new single, the relationship with the majors and the state of health of the record market.
The podcast was born within the Spot Music Festthe Bareggio festival of which All Music Italy is media partner, and brings the two brands on the same stage for the first time. A long and at times rough dialogue, recorded in front of the festival's audience of young artists, which provides the backdrop to several of the most direct reflections of Well done.
Michele Bravi and the “blood pacts with the majors”: “I did it too, no one explained it to me”
The strongest passage of the episode concerns the relationship between young artists and record companies. Well done he speaks openly about what he defines as a mechanism, saying that he has been through it firsthand.
“Every time I hear that a young person has signed these blood pacts with the majors, unfortunately I have done it too because no one had explained it to me, they always find themselves having to dig out money from their own pockets with great difficulty and find themselves not being the owners of their own work. That's why the record industry continues, because it always finds the little fish that make a mountain.”
Hence the advice addressed to the emerging artists present in the room: “Think about the quality of what you want to do. Don't give away your name simply because there is an important brand behind it that makes you feel important. The public gives you the importance.”
The second record market Well done: “He's dead, the only one alive is the live”
Well done does not half-measure the state of the industry. For him, the story of a recovering market does not correspond to the reality of those who make music.
“Discography at the moment, no matter what they say about the market, is a completely dead market. The only market that the public has restarted is that of live music.”
The singer-songwriter clearly distinguishes the two worlds: those who do great record numbers, he explains, often don't fill live shows, and vice versa. His priority, he says, is to talk to those who really listen, not to those who bring people to listen to him.
Michele Bravithe new single and the album in installments
In the episode Well done also presents the new song, born as a piece of a larger project linked to his musical comedy. The piece, he says, starts from a game between four characters and from the “comedy of errors”, with inspiration that comes from afar.
“When I wrote it I started from a wonderful piece by Gino Paoli called Io e tu. Alongside this I was listening to E la luna bussò by Bertè. I don't know why these two listenings came together.”
On the way to publish, Well done admits a changed approach: “At this moment in my life I have a bit more of a scratch-and-win attitude when it comes to publishing songs. I've gotten a little older and therefore I no longer understand what works.”
The challenge of the song that makes you laugh: from Don Quixote in Tenco
Part of the conversation revolves around an idea that Well done pursues as an author: writing a song capable of making people laugh without becoming vulgar or caricatural. The starting point is a childhood memory related to Don Quixotethe only book, he says, that made him laugh out loud as a child.
“I would like to understand what kind of technique, what combinations of words are used to say: I listen to this song because I want to cry, I listen to this song because I want to laugh. What is the magic combination?”
Criticism, irony and a review that made people “sympathetic”
In the finale the discussion shifts to the role of music criticism and irony, which is increasingly difficult to convey. Well done remember knowing Monina thanks to a piece of criticism.
“I met Michele because at my first Sanremo he wrote me a very bad review, it destroyed me, but he made me like him so much because it was clear that it was his opinion, but he didn't do it maliciously.”
There is also room for self-irony, with Longo And Monina which close the episode in an irreverent way, and a short sketch on “Gigetto”, the artificial intelligence which, they say, will one day answer interviews in place of the artists.
