Adnkronos Rome, October 11 (Adnkronos) – It's called "Mi fanno male i capelli" (My Hair Hurts) and it's an It-pop song that won't go unnoticed. Not only because it's written by Peppi Nocera, a veteran television writer who has contributed to the history of some of Italian television's most successful programs (from "Non è la Rai" to "Amici," from "X Factor" to "L'Isola dei Famosi," to "Unica"), but also because he's returning to write an album 40 years after his solo debut, "L'ideologia del traditore," released on Caterina Caselli's CGD label in 1985.
But also because the music and lyrics make it a jewel of political satire and musical provocation.
"My Hair Hurts" transforms a choral mantra ("I-I fa-fa nno-nno...") into an ironic portrait of contemporary Italy, marked by anxiety, vanity, a disoriented left, and a desire for redemption. It begins with a quote from Antonioni's "The Red Desert," with Monica Vitti's voice declaring her existential bewilderment. Nocera unravels a merciless and highly entertaining examination of the crisis of the left, incapable of reacting to the spread of the extremist right: "The Left with a stubborn attitude/Based in Capalbio/An Area 'C' on bicycles/A perfect microbiota."
The song, which previews the album 'Materiale Sensibile' due out on October 24th via Inri/Universal, immediately inspired a post on the highly followed Instagram account 'Prossimi Congiunti', which used the song for a series of slides that ironically and transversally stigmatize the entire world of Italian politics.
Nocera, who humorously declares himself "proudly out of touch with the times," admits he feels "like an alien in a music world that prefers the path of adolescent algorithms and disposable catchphrases." "In a landscape of very ignorant new scenes with homogenized aspirations, crumbling into the trends of a season, at my age I have nothing to prove or lose, so I write and say pretty much whatever I want. And, ironically, I'm a novelty," he emphasizes, speaking to Adnkronos. And it's easy to agree with him. (by Antonella Nesi)