Between the mid -seventies and the mid -1980s, Italian music has experienced a repeated series of short circuits: it will be, as they say, that the water that all these artists have drunk as children was contaminated, it will be that in general it was an era – in the wake of the sixty -eight, at the turn of the seventy -seven – of general breakage of the rules and revolutions, but then the pop with the ranking of our country was repeatedly upset by authentic. Outsider, alien base very morning who were not afraid to upset morals and taboos. Those in the end more aligned with fashions and scenes – or simply more continuous, more solid: those who, the scenes, have defined them – have marked the period and are still remembered today, including songwriters such as Dal and De Gregori, Mica Agnellini, while those more outside the schemes and lasted relatively little have been a little put aside, and with the passage of time the value has not been recognized – or even the play. This is the case of Donatella Rector, who today is 70 years old but who, to review the strength and avant -garde of the character, could be very well 20, Tiè.

An alien who came from the future

After a bad start by the public, but which he had still left to glimpse good things, as in the case of the album Donatella rector (1977), where he touched delicate themes – sexual abuse, drugs, social – in a singer -songwriter key, in an era more dominated by male colleagues, the turning point – the one for which we remember it today – takes place in 1979, in a sort of perfect storm that would go on at least until 1982 of the image of those who sing and to crack it in Italy, where in this we were stopped, working with androgynous and futurist looks that fished from glam and punk, but above all pushing on the sensuality button – or directly of sexuality – at a time that, at the level of television and early evening, was still bigoted. The color TV, the referendum on abortion, the kiss of Benigni in Berlinguer: they are those years there, of change, that she impersonates in full.

With a kind of transgressive and ambiguous pop-rock, which could have been sung by children-his songs are almost nursery rhymes-how to scare for the allusions and double senses he contains, in a short time it becomes the unintegrated scandal (to mention Marco Pannella, companion of cultural revolutions of the time) of our music. The success of Splendid shining (1979) It is a crazy hymn to cosmetic surgery and a dystopian world worthy of other great hits sick from then – above all Vamos in La Playaon the nuclear Holocaust – while the next Kobra It will have been at the center of complaints and boycotts for the explicit references of the text. At the time, in essence, it was a meteorite, but it is still difficult to find a woman in our song (she defines herself “free”, before “transgressive”) who talks about sex with such class and irony of sex. Not because the colleagues are not capable, but because it was there and there is still a culture for which the theme is a taboo, it is not good, and only those who really dare as much, like her, can break this iron curtain.

Although, in fact, the real record to rediscover is Kamikaze Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide (1982), that of Bladeswhich as the individual suggests, another not a small hit, is a huge concept on the Japanese culture of the suicide of honor: can you imagine, today, an artist who comes out with such a job? Or rather, would you be able to imagine, in 2025, an album that deals with such topics?

Rector, today

To this, we refer, when we say about musicians genuinely crazy. And the key, as always, is not in the provocation for itself, but in the ability to arise a debate and disturb, starting from a song. In this, Rector is a race horse, today more than yesterday. It must therefore not be surprised that for his parameters, a recent interview, Giorgia is “overrated” because “he did nothing new in music”. It is there: net of enormous talent, they represent opposite ways of conceiving music. Then, of course, rector is also fatigued: in the nineties the success disappeared and suffered from depression, the last jolt is Chemistry with dionellapiaga, from 2022, in general among the Serie BE album TV programs such as the last Putiferio pain (2025), which seems more a way to pay them homage by those who have happened to it than anything else, the impression is that time has passed for her too. But more than a simple piece of history, just put Kobratoday, to realize that she is not 70 years old, she is not a teacher: she is a girl who is just about to begin.