The List Representative: “Bye bye greenwashing”

He had to call himself The time of the endbut you want to put with Bye bye? The original title was too dark, not in keeping with the spirit of catastrophic euphoria of the song, and so here it is. Bye bye, as the most effective refrain, that of “with the hands, with the feet, with the head, with the chest, with the heart, with the ass”. What we all listened to, everyone sang, everyone danced, even against our will. From Palermo, Veronica Lucchesi And Dario Mangiaracinain art The List Representativeput together the pieces of the origin of the catchphrase that made them a viral phenomenon at the last minute Sanremoprotagonists of hundreds of memes and even an alternate ending of It was the hand of God of Paolo Sorrentinowho on social media had used the song as the background for the last scene instead of Napule is by Pino Daniele.

With their tale of a world on the brink ofapocalypse (“What a fear around, it is the end of the world”), of a planet that is being destroyed and of a “social vertigo” that overwhelms the cities, The Representative of List has also created the first hymn Italian of the environmentalist cause, the perfect soundtrack for the manifestations of Fridays for Italian Futuresthe movement of Greta Thunberg. In whose bubble, in February, he had had a great echo the scream of Cosmosguest of the Representative of the List on the evening of the covers, the only one to have launched a political message from the Festival: “Stop greenwashing!”. The reference was to the marketing campaign of Eni, main sponsor of the event, accused of operations built to make what is not green look green. In Italy, Veronica and Dario are among the artists most seriously engaged in the movements they deal with climate crisis, which we will hear a lot about on April 22 on Earth Day. A constant political commitment, which led them to set up, on April 5, a concert in support of Save the Children to help children affected by war in Ukraine.

Bye bye it combines a serious theme with a register and a cheerful, light-hearted sound. How did you come up with it?
Dario: “On a New Year’s Eve, a friend of ours wrote a wish list for the year that was coming, and among other things she said: Let’s hope that climate change is not what we are experiencing, but what we want to happen. Not the gloomy scenario but a positive ending. When faced with absurdities, there are always two options: to tell them in a catastrophic way or to react, to clash energetically with the problem, to seek a transformation. We chose the second path, also musically ».

Veronica: “Bye bye has closed a circle started with My Mom, the book we wrote about a woman who carries a pregnancy nine months before the end of the world. It was the underground dramaturgy of the record ».

How was the song born?
Veronica: «We perceived the potential of the catchphrase, but I was not so convinced of the song, I preferred another one. And then, when you write a piece that you imagine will become something great, you have some fears: change fascinates you but at the same time scares you ».

Dario: “We wrote it in the days of COP 26 in Milan, in the days when we were in the square with Fridays for Future, immersed in that atmosphere of joyful protest”.

Have you met Greta Thuberg?
Veronica: “We shook her hand and said only one thing: thank you. She was having a snack and we didn’t want to disturb her. ‘

Bye bye it is an environmental anthem but many have not grasped the meaning of the song, they have only the chorus and the ballet in mind.
Dario: “It seems normal to me. In the bubble of the List Representative you think you have been clear, you may also think that whoever asks you for a photo knows perfectly well how committed you are on the climate change front, but obviously this is not the case. After all, 90 percent of De André’s people know The gorilla for sexual innuendo, Mouth of rose because it’s a love song and The fisherman because it is in C major. It works like this”.

Don’t you mind?
Veronica: “But no, that’s something you have to deal with. The catchphrases have different levels of interpretation, and sometimes when something strikes you on a superficial level you can also glimpse the stratification of meaning ».

Cosmo, on stage with you in Sanremo, shouted: “Stop greenwashing” against Eni. Was it an agreed gesture? How did it go?
Veronica: “With Cosmo, Margherita Vicario and Ginevra (all three guests of the Representative of List on the evening of the covers, ed) we had thought for a long time in the previous days about a gesture to be made on that stage so important to send a message, we felt the responsibility. The Fridays for Future and Greenpeace wrote to us about Eni’s marketing operation ».

Dario: “At the beginning we wanted to do something to tell the independent scene linked to the clubs, then this Eni thing came into reasoning”.

Veronica: “For days we thought of a way to express our protest against Eni’s greenwashing operation, but we were armored: it doesn’t say anywhere that you can’t contest the sponsor but we were in the race, the situation was delicate . Then Cosmo came up with the idea of ​​introducing the scream into the music, then an insert into the song. It was the best way. “