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Summer will be back

Obscured by the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, this summer won’t be like previous ones: holiday plans are still uncertain, movement is restricted and outdoor activities are discouraged. Music will certainly continue – who could possibly stop it? sang the Pooh – but it needs to be approached anew in light of our novel circumstances. And so we’ve built a playlist around the theme of memory and estrangement, which focuses on the problems of the present: safe distances between seaside umbrellas and the very concept of open beaches, which must be re-examined in light of the new regulations. Raphael Gualazzi sings about a home-made family video to take himself back to the summers of his childhood; Franco Califano longs for the previous summer in his cover of ‘C’est une belle histoire’ (Michel Fugain); the rap group Assalti Frontali recall the open campsites of Capo Rizzuto, Camerota and Orbetello. ‘Spiaggia libera’ (‘open beach’) is in fact the title of two antithetical songs: Pino D’Angiò sings the praises of the summers of the 1980s to an electro-pop beat, while the beat sensation Notre Dames indulge in social critique in their tirade against a self-centred young woman. The subject of beach umbrellas is taken up from the innocent perspective of the 1960s in songs by Mina and Emilio Pericoli, while 40 years later Simone Cristicchi returns to the motif in an attempt to use irony (and vulgarity) to combat the superficiality of summer holidays. The playlist continues the theme of hating the summer with Bruno Martino, the most critical of the songwriters who sing about the seaside. The end of summer, though, is lamented in the 1980s hedonist vein of the Righeira and in the contemporary vision of The Giornalisti. Out-of-tune songs, as Morandi would say, for a summer that will have to be sung all over again.