CalmoCobra tells the secret of Tananai’s success
Feeling CalmoCobra ‒ Tananai’s new album just released, which we imagine could be his consecration, after two crazy years that filled him with pressure, for which he ended up hearing the manager say, as a title, “calmo, cobra” ‒ it’s hard to see the meme again Casual sex. For goodness sake, it didn’t make sense for him to close himself there first, and already from Sanremo 2023, with Tangohad proven to take the path of melodic ballads, classics, great standards, with no return. But the fact is that of that light-hearted style, which saw crates standing everywhere and talked about drugs every second (Pastawhich is still very popular at live shows), has remained just a more or less hidden echo, and which paradoxically, precisely because it is well hidden, represents one of the secrets of its success. Or rather: everything CalmoCobrawith its backlit drawings, represents the secret of his success.
They aren’t ballads like many others
Of course, it’s a purely ballad album. Above all, Tananai has now made the rounds, has left aside some excesses and has taken over prime time and a transversal audience, from young people to families. That’s the world he plays in, there’s nothing outsider about it anymore. On the other hand, two clues – the singles Poison And Spiderswho return here ‒ had given a glimpse of the proof: with electronics he hadn’t received who knows what kind of public response, so here we are on the side of tradition; at first glance Massimo Ranieri or Tiziano Ferro come to mind, explicitly mentioned in Punk Love History through I can’t explain it to myself. The electronics, almost never danceable, are limited to small interventions by the new guru of indie-tronics, Okgiorgio, and in general it is not that it is essential: for a Radiohead which is the most successful episode of the lot, there is the same one Punk Love History which seems like a facile brawler. So no, the beauty is in the lenses.
Which are not, well, slow anyone. Of course, the interpretation that Tananai represents “an exception” compared to what’s around, facilitated by himself, is a bit simplistic: it’s true that it’s an album written without taking major shortcuts, it’s true that he is a romantic and conveys an idea of music (even, if we want) “for families”, which at times seems to sing with his heart in his hand and is more delicate and less battle-like than the various rappers and trappers who we find at the top of the charts (and in this it is striking that the album is not tainted with feat.); but it must be said that it still has an evergreen tradition behind it which is a guarantee for us. The point, then, lies in the details, in a series of dirty and unexpected elements at certain levels – and the beginnings return, the “raves”, the drugs, but also a self-deprecating imagery – which he manages to insert here and there and which at points make it successful, hypnotic.
Reassuring but also surreal elements
The issue concerns the writing in a marginal way – the pieces are well composed but they are not surprising, they sound rightly reassuring, perhaps the only exception is Look what you’ve donein Baustelle style even more of the same Short stories ‒ but almost always the lyrics. Which have a unique ability to bring back to the ground all with a naive play on words, to host naive elements or surreal passages, to rely on passages that seem to be taken from a teenager’s diary without however sounding empty or pretentious, just ironic. These are traits that make his image as a “good guy” less polished and one-dimensional than that of an Alfa, for example, and his music less traditional than that of an Ultimo, for example. Just the hit Poisonwhich at first glance could be a song by Francesco Renga, and in part it is, to understand: the first chorus tells of the love of the two protagonists with the banality that pop wants, then there is a small short circuit; she asks him “can you imagine if they saw us?” and he replies that “worrying about what other people think is the job of chess players” – what is this, a movie line? Or again, but there are many, an exit like “this fog has never betrayed us like my exes did” (Radiohead), or the attack of Hallway: “I don’t know anyone who knows how to cook panettone.”
What future?
They are elements that are not particularly pop, or at least not trite, which are now only found here. And in this sense, obviously, rather than Massimo Ranieri, the main reference is Calcutta, which with the imperceptible movements in the background, the get over ityou find them strange, he has built a pop language of his own – and which, it must be said, plays in a league of its own compared to all his colleagues, including Tananai. The road that opens up ahead, however, seems to be the same: more than another Tiziano Ferro, more than a new one Nobody is alone which however cannot necessarily have the generational impact, CalmoCobra it could be the viaticum to follow in the wake of Diodato, Samuele Bersani, Cesare Cremonini.