The editorial by Simone Marchetti: lead me to dance

This entry is posted on number 30-31 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until 30 July 2025.

Milan, evening, 1994. Interior of an apartment on the top floor of via San Gregorio. The hosts are Gianfranco and Lino, the first former art history professor, the second designer: together they founded Sharra Pagano, a bijoux brand that will make the history of fashion. I am twenty years old and I find myself, rather silent, for dinner with them. Around me there are journalists, a writer, an agent of lyrical singers, two characters who do not understand who they are nor what they do (but they are very, very witty) and above all the two of them. Giuni and Maria Antonietta. Giuni is the Russian Giuni singer. Maria Antonietta the woman who divides personal and artistic life with her. Giuni is charismatic and He has that power to catalyze looks and be careful on himself as if it were a strange magnet.

Change of scene but always Milan. April 2001 When attacking the song Mediterranean specifies: «Mediterranean I’m me». The fate of this song, its genesis are troubled: it was composed of Giuni and Maria Antonietta as tribute to the Mediterranean and the memory of the singer’s father, a fisherman. But when it was decided to promote it, it was relegated to the B side of the disc because it is considered not commercial enough, not so pop. He was preferred to him Lemonade cha cha cha. For the two it was a blow, one of the many that the record industry would have played him in the years to come.

Again, change of scene. One of our wishes, for a summer number of Vanity Fairwas to launch A Summer Hit, a catchphrase that would make dance and dream. In an informal lunch, we found ourselves with some manager and musicians of Warner Music Italy and we considered several songs, many artists and several remixes. Then, one morning, Renato Tanchis arrived in the editorial office, looked at me in the eye and said: I have it. And in the silence of the office he made us listen to a remix of Mediterranean of Juni Russo.
“What do you think?” He asked me.
“I can’t answer you,” I told him. “I am too tied to this song. But yes, it seems to me A new, wonderful version of Giuni’s masterpiece».

When I got married two years ago, in Pantelleria, I wanted Mediterranean as a song that introduced the ritual of our union. Those words and notes are so capable of telling what the Mediterranean is: the summers, the heat, the sound of the waves at night and the screams of the seagulls during the day, the fishermen and swimmers, The expectations and the solitudes, the dawn, the hot afternoons, the endless sunsets, the family lunches, the holidays with friends, the desire to leave.

With this number of Vanity Fair And with “our” hit song I hope to bring you inside the summer and towards the Mediterranean even if you don’t go there. As we well know, in fact, not all of July and August will be able to afford to have the holidays for Prices gone to the stars and salaries left to the pole. In the next pages, let’s try to tell what is happening to our sea, between excesses of some and desire of all to find Alternative and shores still accessible destinations.

But wherever you are, wherever you go, look for Mediterranean of Giuni Russo remixed by Dumar. Then put the headphones or raise the volume of the music to your car or in your apartment. Let yourself go, sing, ballads. Remove the plug. As the words of Giuni and Maria Antonietta play: Take me to dance / or elsewhere / but take me away from here / for the streets you know / towards the night / do not abandon me to my silence / and take me away from here.

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