Tiziano Ferro: “Twenty years of trouble, but twenty really beautiful years”

His first album, the one that started it all. Twenty years after the publication of Relative red, Tiziano Ferro celebrates the anniversary with a live Instagram with his fans telling the songs, track by track. An hour and ten of words and music, he laughs happily, announces the next unreleased album in the pipeline “Even if I couldn’t say it,” he shows the new haircut, invites him to his concerts in 2023 and explains why he has postponed them “When it came to moving the tour, I didn’t feel like making people keep their tickets for years. I don’t criticize who did it, but I prefer to have given a refund to anyone who wanted their money back. The tour will take place in 2023. I’m writing the lineup, it will be a delusion ». He also says he had Covid «It was horrendous. I didn’t end up in the hospital but it lasted over a month. I’m better but I still lack the sense of smell. The taste hasn’t quite returned yet. Pizza doesn’t taste like pizza yet ». And above all it talks about Relative Red – Anniversary edition (Carosello Records, Universal Music distribution): two special box sets, one on vinyl to be released on October 29th and the other on CD and digitally on November 5th. Inside the reissue of the Italian album and its Spanish version Relative Red but also international versions of the album’s most successful songs, a singular out-take of his very first recording and some remixes.

In a few seconds there are 8000 people connected. Many are waiting for him, from Italy, Latin America, Spain, but also France and Germany. Tiziano speaks to the world in Italian, Spanish, English. He alternates the three languages ​​to involve everyone and tells his songs. “We are here for a very important reason, twenty years of career. Xdono it came out in June but today it turns twenty Relative red. We are here to wish him well. I can not believe it».

The singer-songwriter from Latina retraces his beginnings, when he tried his luck through the Sanremo Academy competition, when he knocked on the doors of the record companies “but they all told me no”, even after meeting Mara Maionchi and Alberto Salerno who had seen him something to believe in. “I was already working with Michele Canova since 2000, the songs were there, but nobody wanted them. It was Fabrizio Giannini, who is my manager today, who signed my first single. But only that. I would have made an album only if it had worked ». It worked. October 26, 2001 Relative red was released in stores and was a record debut album: released in 42 countries, over 2.5 million copies sold, it remained in the top 10 for over 7 months, obtaining 7 platinum records in Italy, Mexico, Spain and Switzerland and 3 gold records between Belgium, France and Turkey.

“On the one hand I still see myself as a rookie, on the other it seems like yesterday. They are songs made when I was fifteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty, I released them without knowing that they would become the songs on my first record“. Tiziano Ferro tells her track by track and celebrates, sings, lights a candle and is moved, referring to the next hug, sure there will be. “Thank you,” he says, “It’s been twenty years and a lot of mess. But twenty really beautiful years».

The things you don’t say
“I wanted the first track to be another one, but the first track was this. I love this song very much. Then his language was excessive. I speak of compensation with food, with alcohol, I speak of promiscuous sex, to fill in the gaps. My mind was carried away by these obsessions ».

Relative red
“It’s a song that came out like a bullet. Alberto and Mara gave me a multitrack with a minidisc, I did my auditions and with a bass turn the first verse came out. I used the name “Paola” because she was, and is, my cousin and my best friend, with whom I was hanging out. We were making noise. I remember that I could not find the engraved. I was in Latina, I was driving with my car. Deserted city, the traffic light was red, I tell her “Paola I pass, it’s red but… it’s a relative red”. Looking for the cut, I remembered what I had said and I tried. But what did “relative red” mean in this song? I created a song that talks about the trend of chats of women and men who went online looking for love. This song took me around the world, opened the doors that changed my life. I started singing in Spanish when I still didn’t speak it. I had a teacher who taught me pronunciation, but I immediately decided I wanted to learn it ».

Xdono
“The trail that will haunt me all my life, all over the world. The song with the X that really changed my life. He scored a before and an after. I wrote it in ten minutes on a bench in my city. I went from a very great sense of frustration to waking up in the morning and looking at my room saying “I’m a singer”, at least for today. I didn’t know if that would be the only experience. This is the song that made me travel all over Europe. I never get tired of singing it ».

Clumsy
“The first slow song I put out. It was my third single but also my first time in a slow song. Today I smile because instead people tie me to the most passionate repertoire. It changed the perception I had of my profession and people of me. I was showing a different side. In Brazil, linked to a television production, it is perhaps the song for which they know me the most ».

Moreover
“It has a particular history. After Xdono which had been a great success we didn’t know which song to use as the second single. This could have, but it never went single. I sang it live as much as possible ».

Never born
“It’s important, I wrote it one night, without knowing I was going to make a record. This is the beauty of the first record, you write songs without knowing what will happen to them. He talks about eating disorders, a topic I often talk about in interviews, I also did it in my documentary. I often talk about it, but never in depth because sometimes there is a risk of the opposite effect, it can lead to those who suffer from it entering the race. It is a topic that must be treated with great detachment because it is very complicated to deal with it. Never born it’s my photograph. I am not a doctor or a psychologist, but I have always thought that the eating disorder is part of the DNA of those who experience it and, even when it improves to the maximum, it is difficult to get out of that mentality. As a child I ate compulsively, there was a great period of anorexia and bulimia … Now things are getting better but I don’t think they can ever really be resolved. Looking back at the promo photos from that period today reminds me that not only did I think I was disgusting, but also that no one around me was telling me anything. No one thought it was a problem to be too thin. We are careful to talk about it. The transition between education and incitement is very subtle ».