Max Pezzali

(Pavia, 1967 – )

Notes on Max Pezzali as a Singer-Songwriter

(by Luca Bertoloni, University of Pavia)

If, at the beginning of his career, anyone had so much as hypothesized that in October 2023 Max Pezzali would win the Lunezia Prize for the musical-literary quality of one of his songs (“L’Universo tranne noi,” 2013), they surely would have been accused of both literary and musical incompetence by experts in the field of Italian songwriting. By the same token, many would have cried foul at the very thought that, in the future, the performer from Pavia would be described as a singer-songwriter.

But the panorama of Italian song has changed profoundly since the 1990s, along with its perception by critics and the public. Thanks to this change, many authors and performers have been repositioned and re-evaluated, including Pezzali, founding member and frontman of 883 for fourteen years (1989 to 2003). After ending his collaboration with Mauro Repetto, he has made a successful return to the spotlight of Italian cultural consumption, though not without many challenges. He has recast himself as an artist and, above all, as a nostalgic representative of a bygone era, thus firmly solidifying his identity by connecting past to present.

It is notable that 883 produced six albums with original content (plus five collections with a few new songs scattered here and there), while Pezzali as a soloist has only released five albums (four collections and a live album). In the setlists of the triumphal tours of 2023 and 2024 there are only six post-883 songs: three taken from his first solo album of 2004, Il mondo insieme a te (The World with You) (“Eccoti” [“Look at You”], “Il mondo Insieme a te” [“The World with You”] and “Lo strano percorso” [“The Strange Road”]), one from the 2007 album Time out (“Sei fantastica” [“You’re Fantastic”]) and two more recent singles, “Sempre noi” (“Us Forever,” 2012) and “Discoteche abbandonate” (“Abandoned Discotheques,” 2024), completely leaving out the three original albums released between 2011 and 2020. If this indulgence for old hits from the past has long characterized many of our most talented artists, such as Claudio Baglioni or Francesco De Gregori, in the case of Pezzali the choice is rather interesting for at least two reasons: Pezzali’s live concerts between 2021 and 2024 are anthological, unlike anything he had done in the twenty years prior where he sought to develop his own identity, independent of 883 (a move that cost him some of his fans’ support). At the same time, the return of past songs and of that particular sensibility evolved in parallel with the reconstruction of a transmedia image that had represented one of the most interesting stylistic features of 883’s production, even if its novelty was never understood by critics or the public. But let us proceed in order.

The success of 883, which occurred for the most part in the 1990s, was due to a mix of different elements such as the use of an international pop sound comprised of synthesizers and guitars, repetitive musical patterns, and catchy, danceable tunes; the use of popular language that includes slang and mild profanity in a rather natural way while also incorporating many English words that have now entered into daily use among young Italians; an overuse of the first person plural, intended to evoke a friendly community as the only antidote to the dispersion of a liquid society; the use of multi-level reworkings of pop imagery, offered in linguistic and above all in visual elements, with a strategy that in terms of verbal citation would become a clear trend in the 2000s for artists such as Pinguini Tattici Nucleari. In this sense, one of the most significant figures is Spiderman, evoked in the group’s first great manifesto of success, “Hanno ucciso l’uomo ragno” (“They Killed Spiderman,” 1992), and records such as La donna, il giorno e il grande incubo (The Woman, The Day, and the Great Nightmare, 1995). The first was created by Pezzali alone, without Repetto, and had a cover image with the singer-songwriter portrayed as Dylan Dog, reaffirming the centrality of comics and visual language in his works.

The songs of 883 are also characterized by a melancholy exaltation of the simplicity of provincial life, in which every action—even the most banal, such as eating a sandwich in the company of friends at a highway service station—becomes an opportunity to socialize by creating a barrier against a difficult and hostile world. This concept is expressed in songs such as “La dura legge del gol” (“The Harsh Law of Goals,” 1997), also written without Repetto, where after a nostalgic vision in photographs of a past that can no longer return, the singer-songwriter indulges in an exaltation of friendly, social community through the metaphor of soccer.

È la dura legge del gol
gli altri segneranno però
che spettacolo quando giochiamo noi,
non molliamo mai.
Loro stanno chiusi ma
cosa importa chi vincerà
perché in fondo lo squadrone siamo noi,
lo squadrone siamo noi.

(It’s the harsh law of goals
the other team will score, but
what a show when we play,
we never give up.
They are closing up their defense, but
what does it matter who wins
because after all we are the champions,
we are the best.)



Pezzali’s solo albums do away with this collective dimension, giving way to a lyricism that does not seem to convince the public, whereas—in the 1990s—the same lyricism was particularly appreciated in love songs such as “Una canzone d’amore” [“A Love song”], “Ti sento vivere” [“I Feel You Living”], or “Finalmente tu” [“Finally You”]. In his solo albums it is surrounded by an autobiographical and personalizing filter which the public struggles to intercept, in contrast to the collective depersonalization of the world staged in the previous decade. The songs from the 2004 album (Il mondo insieme a te) are an exception, as they continue to exploit the 883 effect, but above all they still focus on sentimental lyricism (“Eccoti”) or on the dimension of community, albeit reconfigured in personal and autobiographical terms: in “Lo strano percorso,” a hit from 2004, the singer-songwriter recounts his experiences at Copernico High School in his hometown of Pavia without explicitly naming the school (or the entire city, towards which he implements a sort of geographical subtraction), but then in the chorus he demonstrates how his autobiographical journey once again fits into a collective journey:

Lo strano percorso
di ognuno di noi
che neanche un grande libro un grande film
potrebbero descrivere mai
per quanto è complicato
e imprevedibile

(The strange road
for each of us
that not even a great book or a great film
could ever describe
‘cause it’s so complicated
and unpredictable).

The turning point that causes Pezzali to distance himself from the general public occurs with Time Out (2007), which still touches on themes and styles similar to those of the ‘90s, but is contaminated with new sounds and a gradual distancing from the adolescent and mythical idea of friendship. In parallel, the language loses its material concreteness formed from motorbikes, shared sandwiches, and soccer balls, since the new material elements of the singer-songwriter’s present take on a symbolic meaning that stands in opposition to what they had signified in the past: we notice this, for example, in a song like “I filosofi” (“The Philosophers,” 2007), where gazing at the sea becomes a mystical and introspective experience that has little to do with youthful outings (“Non mi è mai piaciuto stare in spiaggia / a guardare il mare chissà perché / mi sembrava di sprecare il tempo / una stupidaggine inutile” [“I’ve never liked being at the beach / looking at the sea, who knows why / it seemed like a waste of time to me, / a pointless, stupid thing”]), or in a song like “Terraferma,” the title track of the 2011 album (“Terraferma tra le onde dell’oceano / soluzione e cura di ogni male. / Terraferma che i marinai inseguono / e che le stelle mi han fatto trovare / quando ero perso in alto mare” [“Terra firma among the ocean waves / a solution and cure for every evil. / Terra firma that the sailors chase / and the stars helped me find / when I was lost on the high seas”]), which opens with a meta-reflection on his new production (“È una canzone un po’ diversa / da quella che tu ti aspettavi” [“It’s a slightly different song / from the one you expected”]). It is precisely this youthful disenchantment and the arrival of adulthood that is hard to grasp, both for his fandom and for the general public, despite the author’s introspective efforts, which became even more intense in 2015, as evidenced in songs such as “Il treno” (“The Train”), in which the material, urban element—the train—takes on that metaphorical value already used abundantly in traditional Italian songwriting and in early twentieth-century literature.

C’è stato un tempo in cui son stato giovane,
pensavo d’essere forte e infallibile
ma poi gli schiaffi che la vita a volte dà
mi han fatto sciogliere in un bagno di umiltà.
Mentre stavo lì a riflettere
e a compiangermi
ho sentito che
arrivava un treno in velocità
come un suono che rotola e va,
come un treno che si porta via,
come un tuono tutto nella sua scia.
Ne ho persi tanti ma ora non sbaglierò,
ne ho persi tanti ma questo lo prenderò.

(There was a time when I was young,
I thought I was strong and infallible
but then the blows that life sometimes deals
they made me melt into a bath of humility.
As I stood there thinking
and wallowing in self-pity
I heard
a speeding train arriving
like a sound that rolls and goes,
like a train that takes you away,
like thunder all in its wake.
I’ve missed many, but now I won’t go wrong,
I’ve missed a lot, but I’ll catch this one.)

The autobiographical slant takes on even more self-referential features with Pezzali’s latest album to date of unreleased songs, with the significant title Qualcosa di nuovo (Something New, 2020). The title track returns to the theme of nostalgia for the past while facing the fact that the past can no longer be relived. The opening verses read like this:

Te lo ricordi quell’anno, mi sembra una vita fa

forse anche più lontano della maturità

quando eravamo diversi, è così strano se ci penso

(Do you remember that year, it seems like a lifetime ago

perhaps even further than our high-school graduation

when we were different, it’s so strange when I think about it)

marking a disenchantment with the world of the past which can be looked upon with serenity and even humor now. Qualcosa di nuovo plays with the American imaginary, which represents the Dionysian and playful side of the singer-songwriter today, and appears to be a real passion, even an obsession of Pezzali in the last decade (he has traveled repeatedly to the United States with his new wife). Autobiographical traits of this present-day life are told in individual, self-referential and symbolic terms, such as the details of his life in Rome, where he moved before returning to the Pavia area, sung in “In questa città” (“In questa città /c’è qualcosa che non ti fa mai sentire solo / anche quando vorrei dare un calcio a tutto” [“In this city / there is something that makes you feel you’re never alone / even when I’d like to kick everything to the curb”). Rome acts as a counterpoint to the ghostly traits of Pavia in the ‘90s with a very different feeling: Pavia is a place to escape from while Rome is a place to feel at home.

While these lyrics certainly appear more personal and more mature in terms of content and self-expression, they seem less original and stylistically distinctive, limiting themselves to the narration of personal stories which fail to connect emotionally with listeners. For this reason, during his last live tours Pezzali seems to have made peace with his desire for change, instead fashioning himself in the playful key that characterized his experience with 883, but combining it with a nostalgic filter applied in a mature and conscious way. Indeed, in these performances, the nostalgic current that has long been appreciated by his fans and is well represented in the poster for “Gli anni” never fails: over time the song has become an anthem not only for Pezzali’s fans, but for all those who lived through the ‘90s and who feel some nostalgia for the past. It is significant, however, that many of these listeners fail to realize that the song is full of snapshots not from the ‘90s, but of the ‘80s, an era which many of them were too young to have experienced. Hence the media-driven nostalgic current functions thanks to its textual and musical structure, beyond what is actually sung within the text.

Today, therefore, without any fear or shame we can define Pezzali as a singer-songwriter who has successfully made his mark on the national scene by developing a unique style, rich in diverse influences of the nineties, all centered on the eternal nostalgia of adolescence, of a past in which you live carefree between trips on motorbikes and evenings in the club; a past hanging in the balance, as Simonetti (2024) notes, between physics and metaphysics, where materiality always takes on an intimate and symbolic connotation, even when processed in a quick thought that hardly leaves space for reflection. The singer-songwriter would come to terms with all of this gradually, over time, and would grow into adulthood (Berselli 1999). His narrated past is a collective past which all generations can look back on from the present, as it takes on a mythical contour that allows those who observe it to live in the present with the awareness of having lived those “golden years” with intensity, while the mere memory of it allows them to smile and face the challenges they will encounter in the future.

Bibliography

Edmondo Berselli, “Il ‘fast thought’ di Max Pezzali,” in Canzoni: storie dell’Italia leggera, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1999, pp. 155–178.

Luca Bertoloni, “La mediocultura giovanile anni 90 e il caso Pezzali: Rotta per casa di Dio,” Inchiostro, 2017, https://inchiostro.unipv.it/la-mediocultura-giovanile-anni-90-e-il-caso-pezzali-rotta-per-casa-di-dio (last accessed: July 18th, 2024).

Francesco De Rosa, Gianluigi Simonetti, “Innovazione linguistica e visione del mondo nella canzone di consumo degli ultimi anni: il caso degli 883,” Contemporanea, 1, 2003, pp. 115–139.

Gianluigi Simonetti, “La bellezza degli incubi. Invecchiare con Max Pezzali,” Snaporaz online (Musica e teatro), 21 maggio 2024.

Jacopo Tomatis, “The Years of 883: Italian Popular Music at the Time of Commercial Broadcasting,” in Sound, Societies, Significations, Numanistic Approaches to Music, vol. 2, edited by Rima Povilioniené, Springer, 2017, pp. 179–193.

Translated songs: