Ok, there was one and only one Raffaella Carrà, both in terms of cultural impact – the liberation of the customs of “making love from Trieste downwards”, the role of women in entertainment and the rest, those were still other years – and in terms of reach, just think of how she is still considered an icon even in Spain, where while alive, for a period, she was even more popular and influential than here. Yet it is not absurd to say that Annalisa, as a singer, is fitting into that groove, that she has therefore learned the musical lesson of “Raffa” and is bringing it back to the present day. She admits it herself in interviewsdespite the utmost humility, underlining that he is a myth and a reference in the pieces, on the one hand super-pop, singable and danceable, on the other capable of conveying “important messages”. Or at least that’s the – confirmed – idea behind it But I am fireher new album just released, the ninth of her career but just the second after the great exploit of recent times (and therefore the second in which, well, we expect Annalisa something). Surprise: that something it’s there, of course.

A concrete comparison

Obviously, Annalisa it is not the new Carràbut even in these polarized and complex times it can aspire to become something similar and, indeed, it is already well on its way in this regard. Of course she misses the TV (for how long?) and in general she is not an icon of that level, but there is time and the elements at play and the common perception are similar. Today, let’s not beat around the bush, making “pop” music – like, strictly speaking, that of Carrà and Annalisa, of course – is no longer a question of genre, even a lot of rap and trap are pop. And above all, much of its charm is played on divisions: with social media and the cultural struggles of 2025, dividing is easier and more profitable than uniting, which is why the rhetoric of rappers “us against the world” is in vogue, songwriters like Ultimo invent enemies among the press, others play on the possible hatred that perhaps is nourished towards them or perhaps not and Elodie herself seems to have become a test of the state of health of the Right and the Left. That’s it.

And instead Annalisa, like Carrà, no. It is among the very few that has united, in a transversal and credible way, for years. If even a Lucio Corsi, at least in the way it is told, has “enemies” (the presumed decadence of music, against which he would fight, ok), Annalisa has none, especially considering that she is a woman and in the media she is always subjected to double judgment and a sense of competition with her colleagues. It is the face of prime timeAnd Mon Amour played at village festivals, it is the eighties arrangements of this But I am firewhich play on the nostalgia of those who are fifty (and who have already adopted it as a new reference) and on the revival tastes of those who are twenty. Children and the elderly. Works. But precisely those arrangements – and this is demonstrated by the new songs, eleven pieces including those already published Male And St. Mark’s Square – are developed unusually well for today’s Italian pop, with a core idea that is an increasingly rare commodity these days. You can’t help but recognize them. Annalisa is Sanremo, but not the fake sold out ones. It’s also Milan, the fashion shows, but also the tiny provincial town in Liguria where he comes from. It’s fashion, but also the degree in physics (now a meme). He is on the Rome Pride bandwagon (2024), but without becoming a moving target of the Right.

Pop Trojan Horse format

One says, okay, so it’s ecumenical? Maybe she’s just a tightrope walker, someone capable of speaking to everyone, a gift, again, increasingly rare today, and in which Carrà was number one. Tact and intelligence are needed, but it is not a question of cowardice, of wanting to censor oneself. Because then, to really listen But I am firewhich is a bit of a litmus test for all this discussion, the substance and the “contents” are there, of course. Of course, we are not talking about “social” music, yet there is everything: social criticism towards gender issues (the same Male), sex and provocation (in Exhibitionistwhich is a candidate to be the next hit, a hitherto more “modest” Annalisa navigates these ideas well), the religious references to playabove all a certain irony and self-irony that Italian pop currently lacks. And then, precisely, the bumper car choruses, the melodies for the radio and TikTok, in short, what makes these eleven songs the perfect Trojan Horses: just like with Carrà, they can be sung lightly, only to discover that then, underneath, the barb arrives. “The final message”, Annalisa always said, “is that everyone lives their life as they want”, and this is no small thing, again, these days. Who knows how it will end.