By Claudio Giunta (Università di Torino).
There are no second acts in American lives (Francis Scott Fitzgerald). In Italian lives, however, there are. So much so that this artist has changed his style, his themes, his look, and even his name. For those above, let’s say, thirty-five years of age, he is still Jovanotti, the absurd and funny nickname which he chose at the age of twenty, when he began to write songs (it’s a play on words: Giovanni is the equivalent of John, and the word giovanotti in Italian means “youngsters”; but the name may also sound like Joe Vanotti to the Italian-American ear), while for those born later (and for the singer himself, who in 2018 is now fifty-two years old and finds his old nickname Jovanotti a bit embarrassing) he is Lorenzo Cherubini, or simply Lorenzo.
His metamorphosis in these past thirty years has been radical, very likely the most radical witnessed in the realm of contemporary Italian pop music. In the 80s and 90s, the singer Jovanotti was the emblem of loud, disengaged pop music, elementary in its melodies as well as its lyrics (to get an idea one needs only to read the titles: Go Jovanotti Go, Gimme Five, Vai così (Go For It!), La mia moto (My Motorbike), Spacchiamoci le orecchie (Let’s Break Our Eardrums), Una tribù che balla (A Tribe that Dances). But maturity in years has brought artistic maturity to Lorenzo Cherubini. In the last fifteen years, he has written songs of a completely different sort, many of which are quite beautiful, some seriously thoughtful “Fango” (Mud), “La Terra degli uomini” (The Land of Men), “Ora” (Now), “E non hai visto ancora niente” (You’ve Seen Nothing Yet), others sunny and euphoric (“Megamix,” “Il più grande spettacolo dopo il Big Bang” (The Greatest Show since the Big Bang), “È per te” (It’s For You), “L’estate addosso” (Summer’s On You), “Oh, vita!” (Oh Life!), “Le canzoni” (Songs).
“Mezzogiorno” is a hybrid. Its theme is not typical of a pop song (time goes by and brings changes with it), but its thematic development has the tones of a hymn, not those of an elegy.
A Voice of Optimism: Jovanotti and the Reinvention of Italian Pop Music.
By Francesco Ciabattoni (Georgetown University)
Lorenzo Cherubini, universally known by the stage name Jovanotti, holds a uniquely prominent place in the history of Italian pop music. His artistic journey stands as one of the most fascinating examples of expressive transformation within the Italian music scene. Capable of evolving from a youth-oriented, hedonistic cultural phenomenon into a central figure in mature singer-songwriting, Jovanotti has successfully captured the cultural metamorphoses of Italy between the late 20th century and the dawn of the new millennium, translating them into a musical language with a global reach.
The Early Years: The Party Aesthetic and the American Myth
When he made his debut in the late 1980s, the young Lorenzo emerged on the scene as a dynamic disc jockey, a radio entertainer, and a tireless nightlife host. His original musical approach did not pursue intellectual ambitions or social commentary but was entirely rooted in an aesthetic of carefree, uninhibited fun. His debut song perfectly encapsulated this philosophy of life: “Is the party here? / Well, if it isn’t, we’ll throw it ourselves!” In this early phase, his record production—often guided by talent scout Claudio Cecchetto—was entirely geared toward entertaining his peers, drawing on rhythm, physicality, and collective participation. Hit songs like “Sei come la mia moto,” “Ciao mamma,” “Gente della notte,” and “Una tribù che balla” emerged as hallmarks of a generational culture centered on hedonism and the celebration of the present.
In his early recordings, Jovanotti displayed a marked American influence (his first album was in English: Jovanotti for President, 1988), often pandering and blatantly imitative. He presented himself to the public as an Italian follower of the emerging American rap and hip-hop culture, adopting aesthetic codes such as baseball caps worn at a slant, leather jackets, large chains, and gestures borrowed directly from American music television. His interpretation of the genre is evident—in his vocals and backing tracks—in songs like “The Rappers” or “Serenata rap,” in which Lorenzo attempts to transplant the rhythms and sounds of rhythmic speech into Italian pop music.
However, if we look at the models of authentic American rap, we realize that these early hip-hop explorations have very little to do with the African-American sociocultural context or the suburban areas where the genre was born. There is a lack of that visceral connection to street culture, urban hardship, and the struggle for social redemption that had given rise to hip-hop music in the segregated suburbs of the United States. Jovanotti’s lyrics were instead a playful and carefree stylization of that language. Nevertheless, behind the Americanized veneer, Jovanotti remained deeply rooted in the Italian sociocultural context and geography. Emblematic in this regard is the song “Estate 1992,” a portrait of the local scene in which the map of Italian vacation spots—from the Romagna coast with “Riccione, Rimini, Cattolica” to the various tourist destinations across the peninsula—intertwines with a description of summer customs and the cyclical return of Italian music to the beach umbrellas, reclaiming ground from the perhaps overly intrusive American culture:
Cinquecento anni fa Cristoforo Colombo
volle fare una vacanza in giro per il mondo
fu il primo ad arrivare negli Stati Uniti
che prima di allora non si eran mai sentiti
importò il rock, il jazz e anche jeans scuciti
le patate con gli hamburger ed una cifra di miti
che ogni estate ci raffioran dalla radio e in tv
però adesso porco cane non se ne può più
e nell’anniversario della scoperta americana
qui da noi torna di moda la musica italiana va’
(“Estate 1992”).
(Five hundred years ago, Christopher Columbus
decided to take a vacation around the world;
he was the first to arrive in the United States,
which, before then, had never been heard of.
He imported rock, jazz, and even frayed jeans,
potatoes with hamburgers, and a host of myths
that resurface every summer on the radio and TV;
but now, damn it, we’ve had enough
and on the anniversary of the discovery of America
here at home, Italian music is back in style, man)
The Language of Enthusiasm and Stylistic Innovation
From a strictly linguistic standpoint, the early Jovanotti introduced a highly innovative expressive register to Italian songwriting of the time. His vocabulary is simple, deliberately unpretentious, and steeped in slang and the spirit of the times (“Bella storia,” “La mia moto”). Lorenzo doesn’t hesitate to use colloquial constructions, anacoluthons, and even intentional stylistic grammatical irregularities (“I’m lucky / because there’s nothing I need” from “Sono un ragazzo fortunato”). This syntactic choice, far removed from the formal rigor of the Italian lyrical tradition, responds to the need to break down any barriers between the performer and the listener, creating a sense of immediacy and camaraderie.
Through this apparent simplicity, the artist accomplishes a decisive conceptual transition: he succeeds in transforming mere commercial entertainment into a shared, communal experience, founded on s
Through this apparent simplicity, the artist makes a decisive conceptual shift: he succeeds in transforming mere commercial entertainment into a shared, communal experience, rooted in the celebration of enthusiasm and an unshakable faith in life. As the 1990s progressed, his work took on a profound sense of ethical vitality. Songs like “Ragazzo fortunato” (“I’m a lucky guy / because they gave me a dream”) or “Penso positivo” (“I think positively / because I’m alive, because I’m alive”) transform the hedonistic energy of his early days into a philosophy of constructive optimism, capable of speaking to the hearts of an ever-wider and more diverse audience. In “Vasco,” Jovanotti takes aim at Vasco Rossi, alluding to drug use (which Vasco had, in fact, long since given up):
Vai così, è una figata!
perché una storia così non c’è mai stata
che ci ammazziamo, ci divertiamo
facciamo i scemi e qualche volta pensiamo
non c’è problema, è tutto ok
(“Vasco,” 1988)
Go for it, it’s awesome!
because there’s never been a story like this before
we crack ourselves up, we have fun
we act like fools and sometimes we think
no problem, everything’s okay
Maturity: The Ballad Writer and Expressive Simplicity
As he reached maturity—both in age and artistry—Jovanotti underwent a surprising evolution, establishing himself as a sophisticated songwriter capable of alternating between upbeat tracks, refined love ballads, and explorations of social and spiritual themes. His love lyrics shed adolescent naivety to become intimate, contemplative, and poetic. Songs like “Bella,” “Innamorato,” “Come musica,” and “Ragazza magica” stand out for the subtlety with which they describe the everyday reality of romantic relationships and the wonder of discovering another person.
In this mature phase, his compositions tackle the great questions of human existence with renewed awareness. The iconic songs of his mature period—including “La musica dell’anima,” “Magari,” and “So solo che la vita”—revisit the core themes that have always been dear to Lorenzo: the meaning of love, the complexity of daily life, the acceptance of pain, and the constant search for a positive way of interpreting the world. Often, it is the rhythmic drive—cheerful and highly danceable—that guides the song; at other times, however, the musical structure settles into slow, enveloping rhythms. A central element that characterizes Jovanotti’s style lies in his vocal delivery. Lorenzo’s voice—almost a bit “off-key,” characterized by slang-infused diction and a slight lisp—actually proves to be his most effective communicative trademark. The sense that Lorenzo sings “like an ordinary person,” without the virtuosity or technical detachment of the great vocal tradition, bridges the gap with the audience. His imperfect pronunciation translates into perceived authenticity: his voice is not merely an instrument for formal performance, but rather the spontaneous and empathetic vehicle for a shared emotion. It is precisely this combination of technical fragility and compelling human energy—along with his many extraordinary songs—that makes Jovanotti an iconic and unique figure in the contemporary history of Italian pop music.
COMMENTARY BY CLAUDIO GIUNTA (Università di Torino).
“Mezzogiorno” is the metaphorical midway point of life. Jovanotti’s refrain in Mezzogiorno elaborates on this metaphor—not original, of course, but neither is it at the top of the scale of obvious clichés—in order to define the generation to which Jovanotti belongs (he was born in 1966, the song was released in 2008) and the phase of full maturity which this generation has reached: “We’re like the sun at noon / With no more shadow around us.” Maturity is nothing to fear; in fact, it produces a certain euphoria, a feeling that is echoed by the brightness of the melody: we are at the height of our lives, in the center of things, this is our moment; just as when the sun is at its peak, it does not cast shadows (where shadow is perhaps, metaphorically, ‘what until now has prevented us from reaching maturity’; or more simply, ‘life’s problems’; or perhaps with no more shadow around should not be read as a metaphor, but only as a filler which repeats the concept of ‘full sun’).
But this refrain is not the most interesting part of the song. The interesting part lies in the remainder. Mezzogiorno, in fact, neatly illustrates a structural feature common to many contemporary songs. Songs ‘of the past’ would use the stanzas to develop a basic concept or image in order to pursue a certain semantic consistency. Here we have Claudio Villa’s Binario (but it is also the case for Sinatra’s My Way, and most any older song):
The woman has departed with the train, the lover who speaks in the text begs the ticket collector to stop the train so that he can “see her again.” The lyrics are simple, but they offer one message, with the same clarity that you might find in a page of prose (only the lexicon and syntax are “poetic”: refined terms such as odo (I hear), and anastrophes like “fermo te ne stai” (still you sit), “giovinezza mia” (youth of mine)). In the stanza of Mezzogiorno, instead, not only are there verses that seem to have no relationship with the overall meaning of the song, beginning with the first, “Caselli d’autostrada tutto il tempo si consuma” (tollbooths on the highway all time is consumed), but even when this relationship exists, the verses follow one another, for the most part, without there being any cogent semantic tie between them. There is no relationship of logical implication between “Venere [che] riappare sempre fresca dalla schiuma” (Venus always reappears cool from the waves) and “La foto della scuola non mi assomiglia più” (my school photo no longer resembles me), or between “Un bacio e poi un bacio e poi un bacio e poi altri cento” (a kiss and then a kiss and then a kiss and one hundred more) and “Teoricamente il mondo è più leggero di una piuma” (In theory the world’s as light as a feather).
At the same time, it would be incorrect to say that there is no logical implication between the verses of the song. This implication is there, even if the gaps are wider than those which hold together the text of Claudio Villa’s Binario. The theme of the song is that of assuming the responsibility that comes with age, and that also brings with it a new way of seeing the world, a new wisdom: you accept that things will change (“E giorno dopo giorno passeranno le stagioni” (and day by day the seasons will go by)), but you also realize with relief that the change leaves something intact, that “non tutto quel che brucia si consuma” (not all that burns is consumed): the face of the child in the photo is no longer that of the adult, but his defects, his character, are still the same; and the scars are “autografi di Dio” (God’s autographs), in the sense that even the painful experiences of the adult looking at the photo are as blessed and sacred as life itself and, in other words, they made life worth living. There exists, therefore, a certain semantic consistency. But this consistency is not a given; it is a consistency which the listener must reconstruct with care and effort, by looking for the common denominator that holds together the various statements. In this collage, even the defects, even the gaps in meaning ultimately contribute to its aesthetic pleasure, thanks to the agogic force—I cannot find a less erudite word to say the same thing—which music has, as if the mere sound were enough to establish a link between words and phrases that do not have the same link when read on the page: verses such as “Un bacio e poi un bacio e poi un bacio e poi altri cento, / teoricamente il mondo è più leggero di una piuma” (A kiss and then a kiss and then a kiss and one hundred more / In theory the world’s as light as a feather) mean nothing in prose, are acceptable but corny in poetry, but are delicious once put to music, this music.
The register of the song is euphoric, as I said. To be at the high noon of life, be the high noon of life, fills the lyricist (lyricists, to be accurate: Riccardo Onori, Saturnino Celani and Jovanotti) with optimism and a desire to be active. The consent he gives to existence is characteristic of pop songs, which in most cases seek to show us the bright side of life. We like them for this very reason. Poets ponder the negative side of life. It falls to the poet to reflect, for example, on the fact that just one minute after having reached high noon, or the fullness of life, our sunset begins: “But oh, love’s day is short, if love decay. / Love is a growing, or full constant light, / And his first minute, after noon, is night” (John Donne, A Lecture upon the Shadow).