(Carrara, 1982 – )
by Luca Bertoloni (I.C. Siziano, Pavia)

While the notes of “Occidentali’s Karma” (“Westerner’s Karma”) resounded on the stage of the 2017 Sanremo Music Festival, a light-hearted anthem about Eastern-influenced fashions in the West (including Italy), no one could have imagined that within its author and performer Francesco Gabbani (born in 1982 in Carrara) lay a certain stylistic and authorial peculiarity that would stabilize over time. Over the next ten years, in fact, the singer-songwriter continued to compose recognizable and notably postmodern songs, representative of a style that had established itself in Italian songwriting since the late 1970s with artists such as Franco Battiato and Rino Gaetano, but original in their attempt to interpret the small details of everyday life in the 2010s and 2020s, projecting them into a dimension beyond time and space. This is the distinctive style of a singer-songwriter who doesn’t shy away from being “pop,” in the sense of popular (Colombo and Luporini 2025), but whose songs conceal both a certain vision of the world and the desire to express it in an accessible way, inspiring imagery in which high and low cultures merge.

1. From the beginning to Amen (2016), manifesto of a style

After recording several pieces as a multi-instrumentalist, Gabbani released his first original songs between 2011 and 2014, the year of Greitist Iz, his first album. The eleven tracks already hint at what would become the central theme of his work: the struggle against time and the need to live in an eternal present, to be inhabited in order to find answers to inner questions of meaning. In “Le piccole cose,” for example, we hear the lines “Mentre passa il tempo piano piano / scolorisce il senso delle piccole cose” (“As time slowly passes / the meaning of small things fades”) repeated over and over again: an obsessive accumulation of words that recounts the struggle to experience adequately the small things of everyday life. In “Per tornare liberi,” however, the reflection gives way to an invitation that becomes the expression of a sort of will to power: “E adesso voglio il conto, che spavento / questo è il tempo per tornare liberi, veramente liberi” (“And now I want the bill, how scary / this is the time to be free again, truly free”).

However, it wasn’t until 2015 that Gabbani achieved fame, thanks to his victory in the Newcomers category of the 2016 Sanremo Music Festival with the song “Amen.” It was there that he not only began collaborating with some of the country’s leading lyricists (such as Fabio Ilacqua, with whom he would co-write most of his biggest hits, and Pacifico), but also established the signature style that would define him well into the future. The song is characterized by a unique blend of concrete and abstract elements, blending the mystical, spiritual, and esoteric with the needs of everyday life, which often conceal the difficulty of making room for the inner journey, and thus the path to serenity. This difficulty is narrated in a simple, repetitive style, rich in references to high culture, seamlessly inserted and reused in a completely different context than the original.

Un visionario mistico all’università
mi disse l’utopia ci salverà
astemi in coma etilico per l’infelicità
la messa ormai è finita figli, andate in pace
cala il vento, nessun dissenso, di nuovo tutto tace

E allora avanti popolo
che spera in un miracolo
elaboriamo il lutto con un Amen, Amen.

(A mystical visionary at the university
told me utopia will save us
teetotalers in an alcoholic coma from unhappiness
mass is over, children, go in peace
the wind dies down, no dissent, all is silent again

And so forward people
who hope for a miracle
let us process our mourning with an Amen, Amen.)

The originality lies in the reuse of the religious term amen, which becomes a cultural synthesis suited to conveying a typically Italian and Western attitude: resignation in the face of the difficulties of the present. The concluding affirmation of Christian prayers is thus secularized and extended to synecdoches of an action that everyone seems to recognize, even inverting the invitation of political movements like communism (“E allora avanti popolo,” from “Bandiera rossa”), which instead encouraged personal involvement to fight for a better world. It is precisely the particularity of this reuse, repeated several times in the chorus with a fresh, catchy, and accessible sound, that has ensured the song’s popularity. The album Eternamente ora (2016), which contains “Amen,” continues the reflection on time, creating a continuum between present and past that merges into everyday contrasts perceptible in the present, as the eponymous song states: “Questo mio tempo continua con te / pace inattesa dopo tanto rumore / sei l’acqua buona in cima alla salita / una ringhiera a cui poggiare il cuore” (“This time of mine continues with you / unexpected peace after so much noise / you are the clear water at the top of the climb / a railing to lean your heart against”). The blend also projects these lyrics into an achronic dimension in which present-day actions seem to lose their chronological connotation, taking on an existential one that leads the self to stubbornly seek its own peace (“Passa veloce l’anima cerca la pace, pace, pace” [“The soul passes quickly looking for peace, peace, peace”], “La strada”, 2016).

Gabbani’s great success, however, came in 2017, when he won the Sanremo Music Festival with “Occidentali’s Karma” (Fiori 2018).

2. The success of Occidentali’s Karma (2017)

The song, performed during the second evening of the 2017 Festival, immediately attracted the audience’s attention: for the presence of quotations drawn from diverse cultural contexts, from Shakespeare (Essere o dover essere / il dubbio amletico” [“To be or to have to be / that Hamlet-like dilemma”]) to British ethologist Desmond Morris (whose famous 1967 essay, “The Naked Ape Dances”), from the contemporary world (“intellettuali del caffè / internettologi / soci onorari al gruppo dei selfisti anonimi” [“intellectuals in cafés / internet experts / honorary members of the “Selfie-iss Anonymous” group]) to Heraclitus (“comunque vada, panta rhei” [come what may, panta rhei]) and a well-known Gene Kelly hit (“and singin’ in the rain”); as well as for the on-stage presence of a performer dressed as the aforementioned monkey (Fiori 2018). The song stands out as a cross-generational success, attracting both children and adults. The catchiness of the tune, however, partially obscures the meaning of the lyrics, which follow along the same conceptual lines as his previous ones, but imbued with a broader social significance. Gabbani denounces the West’s difficulty in experiencing the present moment fully, both because of the desire to pursue Eastern trends that remain superficial, without truly impacting society’s spiritual evolution, and because of the discomfort created by technology and the web. In doing so, he denounces Western superficiality as a means of combating unhappiness, presenting song and dance instead as cultural systems for attempting to stop time and experience a different sort of spirituality.

The song is featured on the album Magellano (2017), which alternates light pieces with many cultural and musical references like the one presented at the Festival (including “Pachidermi e pappagalli” and “Tra le granite e le granate”) and others that are more explicitly projective, existential, and programmatic (such as the eponymous “Magellano”: “Baciare ad un tratto in bocca la felicità / piegare il vento come la volontà / Magellano nella terra del fuoco” [“To suddenly kiss happiness on the mouth / to bend the wind like will / Magellan in the land of fire”]), in which the reference to the famous Portuguese navigator is reused as a symbolic—albeit questionable—model of self-determination and stubbornness. By the end of 2017, Gabbani was thus a successful artist, whose compositional style had become a highly recognizable trademark.

3. A recognizable pop style

With the release of “È un’altra cosa” (May 2019), which preceded the album Viceversa, released after the 2020 Festival, audiences now recognized some elements of his style, including puns (“io per partito preso non son più partito” [“I’m no longer a party, out of prejudice”]) and bold juxtapositions (“la marijuana puritana non funziona” [“Puritan marijuana doesn’t work”]). The songs that are most replete with these puns, known as “gabbanate,” are characterized—in addition to the elements mentioned above—by a summery feel and the evocation of a climate of disengagement and entertainment, while still maintaining a consistently reflective subtext. The single, however, does not do justice to the album’s collective shift, which leads Gabbani to gradually abandon the individual perspective in favor of a more organic approach to social awareness. A successful example is “Duemilaediciannove,” where the choral intent is expressed through a strongly citational and contaminated, yet at the same time balanced, style:

Al di là della norma del sistema sociale
(cri cri cri, ci son troppe cicale)
con un piede nel bene e una scarpa nel male
dietro a queste parole dentro a cui ci perdiamo
al di là del sesso, del progetto immenso
del concepimento, dell’essere umano
ti amo

(Beyond the norms of the social system
—cri cri cri, there are too many cicadas—
with one foot planted in good and one shoe in evil
behind these words within which we lose ourselves
beyond sex, the immense project
of conception, of the human being
I love you)

The singer-songwriter traces every experience of the self back to a comprehensively human experience: indeed, to a challenge for humans who must try to survive an existence, the meaning of which they struggle to grasp, crushed as they are by the cacophony of everyday life and social systems. This awareness leads Gabbani to denounce, among other things, the excessive use of words: in “Viceversa,” this approach is particularly original because the song is presented in a context like that of the Sanremo Festival, where the lyrics of love songs have long dominated the stage (and still do). The chorus of this song, however, seems to affirm the very uselessness of certain semantically empty words, arguing instead for the primacy of love as a form of life, and therefore of living every moment, including love, here and now, with great intensity.

Ma se dovessimo spiegare
in pochissime parole
il complesso meccanismo
che governa l’armonia del nostro amore
basterebbe solamente dire
senza starci troppo a ragionare
che sei tu che mi fai stare bene quando io sto male e viceversa

(But if we had to explain
in just a few words
the complex mechanism
that governs the harmony of our love,
it would be enough to simply say
without thinking too much
that it’s you who makes me feel good when I’m feeling bad and vice versa.)

This awareness leads the singer-songwriter to seek an answer to this crisis, finding it not only in the invitation to live in the present, but in the need for self-determination of an ego dispersed and expanded in the liquidity of the present.

This theme is addressed in particular in Volevamo solo essere felici, his 2022 album in which the chaos of the present becomes a programmatically dominant dimension within which humanity is invited to seek its own reference points in order to survive, on the one hand, and live adequately, on the other. The album, which hasn’t really enjoyed great success, features at least three very strong tracks. The first is “Sangue darwiniano,” which continues the tone and reflection of the 2017 hit (complete with a self-quotation in the final bridge: “No, volevo dirle che se dovessimo spiegare/ in pochissime parole le lezioni di Nirvana con / si ricorda il famoso Buddha in fila indiana?” [“No, I wanted to tell you that if we had to explain / in very few words the lessons of Nirvana with / do you remember the famous Buddha in single file?”]) but in an even more intense way, offering contrasts that are almost unsettling to the ear, capable of conveying a world in which everything is contaminated (Missionario musulmano / eschimesе e africano[…] / Dalai Lama newyorkese / un Prosecco Sangiovese / Padre Pio, Harry Potter e anche Dio” [“Muslim missionary / Eskimo and African […] / New York Dalai Lama / a Prosecco Sangiovese / Padre Pio, Harry Potter, and even God”]), which leads humanity to unhappiness ((“È nato un nuovo mondo eppure sono a lutto” [“A new world has been born and yet I’m in mourning”]), as it risks losing itself.

Nell’era dell’acquario mica mi ci tuffo
si stava meglio prima, te com’è che stai?
lavoro tutto il giorno, hard day’s night
è una rivoluzione su YouTube, è un video apocalisse
per imparare poco o niente, metti casomai finisse
questo sangue darwiniano sgocciolato sul divano
Gеsù Cristo fermo con le mani in mano

(In the age of Aquarius, I’m not diving in.
things were better before, how are you?
I work all day, hard day’s night
it’s a revolution on YouTube, it’s a video apocalypse
to learn little or nothing, just in case it ends
this Darwinian blood dripping on the couch
Jesus Christ standing with his hands in his pockets)

The second is “La rete,” where the social web is described as a fishing net through Gabbani’s classic style of contrasts, where polysemy mixes with rhythmic and obsessive returns that convey a certain difficulty in life. The last is “Spazio tempo,” where the philosophical intent is expressed in a particularly successful construction, both musically and lyrically.

4. The Invitation to Live the Everyday in Eternity

In this text, Gabbani definitively summarizes what we might call his philosophy, that is, the dual and ever-changing attitude that allows us to remain human in the context of postmodern liquidity: anchoring ourselves to the everyday and its little things, which helps us find moments that give meaning to the present and allow us to overcome our struggles; and projecting ourselves toward a dimension without time and space, in which we can experience and touch the eternal (Gambirasio 2025). Time thus transforms into a continuous flow in which past and future intertwine (“Il passato non dimentica / il futuro fa ginnastica” [“The past does not forget / the future does gymnastics”]) in a series of small moments that we must imbue with meaning (Natale in un qualsiasi lunedì / Houdini / che toglie le catene al mondo” [“Christmas on any Monday / Houdini / who unchains the world”]) to ensure that they are intense, and above all, that they give us a foretaste of the eternal (“un battito perpetuo / che dura un momento” [“a perpetual beat / that lasts a moment”]). Western culture thus experiences its revenge, as the singer-songwriter reviews moments in the history of art and thought in which Western artists have attempted to fight this unequal battle (“Nei millenni tutti gli anni / aspettando primavera / un Platone, un Botticelli d’emblée” [“Throughout the millennia, every year / waiting for spring / a Plato, a Botticelli right from the start”]), all sung against a musical backdrop that opens upward, once again projecting the present into an ethereal dimension.

Gabbani’s latest album to date, Dalla tua parte (2025), synthesizes and brings together many of the elements that characterize his style and production, even if there is a certain sense of imbalance among the songs. For example, the song presented at the Festival in the same year, “Viva la vita,” eliminates wordplay, tending towards a mixture of the abstract and the concrete, which is at times forced (“ma com’è limpida / com’è domenica”  [“but how clear it is / how Sunday is”]), preferring to condense a clear and projective message into the chorus (“Viva la vita così com’è/ viva la vita, questa vita che / è solo un attimo / un lungo attimo”  [“Long live life as it is / long live life, this life which / is only a moment / a long moment”]). Instead, songs like “Al di là”  are rich in cultural contaminations which, however, appear to be of little use in expressing an overall meaning (“Due Promessi Sposi incatenati alle promesse spese / restiamo perlomeno ieri, adesso, sempre e mai / come umili e spietati samurai”  [“Two Betrothed chained to the promises spent / we remain at least yesterday, now, always and never / like humble and ruthless samurai”]), as well as insisting in a rather convoluted way on the key concepts of his poetics, presented in accumulation. More successful, however, are the explicit divertissements such as “Frutta malinconica,” which not only relies on an effective paresthetic intuition (the fruit that feels melancholy), but constructs a series of summer images suitable for accompanying the season’s soundscape with lightness, without rejecting the taste for contamination and quotation ((“frutta fresca di stagione / nei campi di girasole […] / ma stasera / la stagione dell’amore / è solo un’allucinazione / te quiero mucho, sai, sotto l’ombrellone” [“fresh seasonal fruit / in the sunflower fields […] / but tonight / the season of love / is just a hallucination / I love you so much, you know, under the beach umbrella”]).

What becomes clear, at the conclusion of this reconstruction, is Gabbani’s ability to turn his gaze over time toward the human dimension, which is expressed in the struggle and search for a balance essential to living peacefully. This trajectory is supported by the singer-songwriter’s attempt to provide answers to questions that are certainly timeless, yet embodied in the fluidity of the present, serving as an effective window onto contemporary society.

In short, Gabbani’s songbook embodies a kind of karma that is no longer simply an ironic provocation towards the West, but an invitation to consciously rediscover spontaneity, the capacity for surprise, and the strength to grasp the eternal (Fiori 2018). These aspects make him an interesting figure in the Italian music scene of the last decade, as, behind the logic of pop (Colombo and Luporini 2025), he reveals himself as a singer-songwriter capable of making the complexity of the human condition accessible through language that remains light, yet is used as a tool to interrogate our relationship with time and space, but also with others and, ultimately, with ourselves.

Bibliography

Fausto Colombo and Lorenzo Luporini, A Common Story: Why Pop Culture Tells Who We Are, Milan, Mondadori, 2025.

Umberto Fiori, “The Song Cites Monkeys, Wins the Nobel Prize, and Avoids Drucciole,” in Vittorio Spinazzola (ed.), Tirature’18. Happy Ending, Milan, Il Saggiatore, 2018. Luca Gambirasio, “Pop Environmentalism: An Ecomusicological Analysis of Italian Singers Elisa, Francesco Gabbani, and Jovanotti,” JWPM, 12/2, 2025.