Paradise can’t wait

This article was published in issue 51 of 20 December 2018 and we are republishing it today to retrace the changes of which Vanity has been the protagonist in the last 20. Here are all the articles we are republishing.

«You can’t blame singers for what they write. Anyone who does not pay attention to respecting the safety rules is guilty. And the guy with the pepper spray is the Ebbasta Idiot. Not Sphere. The world of rap and trap thrives on provocative language, as we know. But this does not mean that those who write or, worse, those who listen to that music are violent or sexist. I like Quentin Tarantino’s films, I liked it Gomorrah, but I don’t go around shooting. After all, the ancient Greeks teach: artistic creation is catharsis. Otherwise all viewers of Medea of Euripides would kill their children.”
This is how Tommaso Paradiso expresses himself on the phone on the topic of “bad music”, the specious and dangerous debate that arose in the aftermath of the tragedy at the Lanterna Azzurra nightclub, where six people died, including five minors.

I had met the frontman of Thegiornalisti a few days earlier, for lunch in the restaurant of his favorite hotel in Milan. Baseball hat, shorts (“then I’ll go to the gym”), Tommaso is as Roman as a stone from the Colosseum and has a degree in Philosophy: quotes from Hegel and Husserl rain into the conversation like this, surprisingly. He writes and sings songs suitable for mothers and grandmothers. The hit Riccione, the malicious say, would even be on the Baby Dance playlists among nursery school children. The only visible swearing occurs in Happiness bitchsingle hit of the moment taken from the latest album, Love.

Tommaso doesn’t mind trap (“I find Ghali very good and I enjoy some of the Dark Polo Gang’s stuff”) but the feeling is that talking to him about this music is like talking about legs of lamb with a vegetarian. Because his world is made up of love stories, travel, daily heartbeats, cinema and television quotes, from De Sica (Christian) to Dr. House. Tommaso sings «I send you a ten minute vowel / just to tell you how happy I am» and the first declaration inspired by Gazzetta dello Sport of Italian music: «I have won the World Cup since you were there / you are the national team in 2006», dedicated to his girlfriend Carolina Sansoni.

Paradiso does not keep this writing ability, so immediately catchy, just for himself: he has written for Gianni Morandi and Luca Carboni, Noemi and Giusy Ferreri. Everyone wants it, everyone is looking for it. They had also offered him a part in the television series 1993 and, recently, he met Verdone: «I hope to be able to write the column for his next film, Carlo è un mito».

At the beginning the critics said «you are good but you don’t do anything new», now «you are good but you were better when you were a small indie band, today you are too mainstream». Who did you want to be?
«I never thought I would have the cover of Vanity Fair or to hear the name Thegiornalisti pronounced by Fabio Fazio. But I’m happy it’s happening. I want to be comfortable, in a big house, live well, I’m not nostalgic for when we traveled a thousand kilometers a day in the van to play around and get paid just enough for petrol.”

He never thinks: if I address large numbers, will I become less authentic?
«But aiming for large numbers is fundamental! Everyone likes the Sistine Chapel, Picasso, the Beatles and there must be a reason. I’m not comparing myself to any of these things, let’s be clear, otherwise they’ll think I’m crazy. But when I see 12 thousand people jumping in unison in an arena and I see that these 12 thousand are aged from 10 to 60, I’m happy. The journalists play in the eternal championship of Italian song: songs to be sung by everyone.”

What music did you listen to as a kid?
«I was obsessed with Brit Pop: Blur, Verve but above all Oasis. I’ve done crazy things for them. I used to go to the Gallaghers’ house in London. There weren’t even cell phones that took photos. It was just to say: I’m here, and here, right here, lives a Gallagher. Before, I listened to my mother’s favorites: Lucio Battisti, Gianna Nannini, John Lennon and Antonello Venditti. For me Night before exams it’s the perfect song. I am very attached to childhood, to high school, to that moment in life made up of scooters and first drunken moments, also described in part by Gabriele Muccino’s first films.”

She never knew her father and grew up, an only child, with only her mother. What relationship do you have? «I love her to death but you know what it’s like, right? Mothers piss off their children and vice versa. My mother is incredibly critical of me. Nothing ever suits her: her hair, her clothes… ».

And the songs?
«Oh, well. For her, everything should be done with the grand piano and strings… she’s a classicist.
When we put the synth in a piece, he had a lot to say about it. Last night I dreamed about her, I had a nightmare in which she was sick, blood was dripping from her nose, so as soon as I woke up I phoned her all worried. She was fine, in the car, she went to my grandmother who is 97 years old and, for a couple, has senile dementia. I also go there when I can, I hug her and shake her hands and talk to her. She no longer understands anything, I don’t know if she recognizes us, yet something, a small light in the midst of the darkness of the mind, I feel that it is there.”

Is your mother religious?
«I attended Catholic schools and there was a period in which I was addicted to St. Thomas Aquinas, reading that opens and enlightens, but I don’t have very clear ideas. Let’s say that my relationship with religion, at the moment, is in parentheses.”

Until what age can you be a pop star or rock star?
«Vasco and Mick Jagger demonstrate that there are no limits, you probably just need to have the desire and keep in training. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll do this job until I realize whether a song is good or not.”

Are frontmen born or made?
«You are born. You must be the one who was already chosen as the protagonist in the elementary school Christmas play.”

Is this your case?
«Let’s say that, even as a child, I was very lively, naturally predisposed to healthy stupidity».

Who are the other two in the band who never appear?
«We met at the Lian Club in San Lorenzo many years ago. I played in a band called Kosmoradio, they in another, Ballast. We liked each other and started a parallel band in secret. A total horn, like when you’re at two thousand with your lover and zero with your wife. At a certain point we had to tell the truth and start the procedures for the two divorces, it was very complicated. The drummer, Marco Primavera, is our zen soul. All herbal teas and never a drop of alcohol. He travels separately from us, goes with his girlfriend to see exhibitions in the cities where we will play. The guitarist, Marco Antonio Musella known as Rissa, is more like me, playful, messy, we have big arguments, moments of immense anger. But the three of us are indivisible.”

She said she suffered from panic attacks.
«I still suffer from it, in the most stressful periods. I treat them with sport and some pills. Psychologists, with all due respect for the category that saves the lives of so many people, were of no use to me. Panic attacks are a bit of a dark thing, you never know when they will come. It usually strikes me in the morning because I sleep little and badly. I’ve always been an insomniac, ever since I was a child: if a pin drops in Norway, I hear it and wake up.”

You’ve been with Carolina for almost two years, is this sentimental tranquility good for you?
“Very. It’s not true that creativity is fueled by torment, for me it’s the exact opposite.”

How did you meet?
«At a football match. She was sitting behind me, I saw her and from there I started to unleash hell.”

How can you be a theorist of romance in the age of WhatsApp?
«You must really like women, you must know how to enjoy the pleasure of a long conquest, write and rewrite messages, interpret the blue ticks, wait and prepare the ground for the first kiss. Those who want to get straight to the point seem desperate to me, I don’t understand them. Courtship is the most beautiful thing, it makes life worth living.”

Will you get married?
«Help, but what question are you asking me?».