With “Scorpio”new album by Aielloa clear field opens: bring the voice back to the centre, even before the image.
The work moves within a more explicit, sensual and contemporary R&B, but above all it reveals an artist who has learned to live with his own fragilities without transforming them into a mask.
Between Milan and Rome, between Frank Ocean and Italian melody, an album of emotional and sonic transition takes shape, in which the desire for lightness passes through the progressive erosion of fears. We met him to gather his suggestions.
THE INTERVIEW
Before listening to your new album “Scorpione” you listened to your debut album “Ex Voto”. What links those two records?
In “Ex Voto” there was already a touch of R&B that ran through some songs, but it was mixed with much more. Here, however, that component is much more evident.
And then I found an enthusiasm similar to that of the debut album. When you start no one expects anything from you, no one demands anything, and you enjoy the journey much more freely.”
What is Scorpio for you?
Somewhere I read: The greatest gifts in life are not found in plans, but in detours. This album is the result of a lot of roads, unforeseen and new, that I traveled for the first time. It is an album that does not lose its usual vocal muscularity and passion, but at the same time, proudly testifies to the evolutionary work in progress, on the voice, on the sound, on the words.”
You defined this album as a dialogue with your shadows. What scared you most about actually listening to yourself without judgment?
There are 9 songs in which I tell the most mature and aware dialogue with my shadows, my most recent relationship with the feeling of Love.
In reality, I have always been someone who seeks approval. I have the fear of not being enough, of not being liked enough. In this album I tried to free myself from these burdens to better experience both writing and work, but also sharing songs. And today I am very proud of this journey.”
Leaving Rome for Milan seems to have had an almost identifying value. Did you feel like you were betraying a part of yourself?
More than cheating, I had to abandon a part of me that actually didn't really belong to me. It was a version of me built on the fear of being judged, abandoned, not welcomed. At a certain point I overcame that fear, as I sing in A Thousand Hurricanes, and I started making important choices. The first was leaving Rome after seventeen years. Rome remains my home, I will return, but I want to return with new energy. The one I rediscovered while living in Milan in the last two years.”
Scorpio is a very physical album: skin, rooms, sea, voice. It seems to arise more from the body than from the head.
It is true! This album tried to free itself from mental cages. In recent years I have worked a lot on myself to dismantle certain limits that I imposed on myself. And so I rediscovered characteristics that have always belonged to me: being epidermal, passionate, physical. Without continually overthinking everything.”
Here your R&B imagery is much more explicit and contemporary. How did you avoid aesthetics taking over emotional urgency?
I gave priority to the desire to treat myself to a record that really resembled the music I listen to every day. I was inspired by what I listen to every day. I tried to bring together that world, which is my daily listening, with the melodic Italian pop singing that is part of my DNA. This album was born from that experiment.”
Inside Scorpio coexist Frank Ocean, Pino Daniele, SZA and Mina. How did you find a balance between the emotional minimalism of contemporary R&B and Italian theatricality?
It's the challenge of my life. Seeking a balance between my inner drama queen, the theatricality, my profoundly southern being, with all that that entails, and instead the lightness, the softness, the coolness of the R&B that I have always listened to. In the past I was very over dramatic, very theatrical. Here I tried to make these two souls coexist.”
Goodbye Monster uses the metaphor of the funeral without turning it into a tragedy. Have you learned that certain memories should not be erased but resized?
Totally. I really gave a funeral to a series of things that had become cumbersome. I've told them a lot, I don't deny them, but I needed to close that chapter. I needed that funeral to start something new. Scorpio is the first chapter of a new era, of a new light.”
There are very different collaborations on the album, from Colombre to Antonia to Leo Gassmann. How were they born?
All three are born from love and esteem. With Colombre there is a relationship cultivated over the years, which has become authentic affection as well as artistic esteem. Antonia, on the other hand, was also a human discovery: I already knew her voice, I liked it a lot, but by working together in the studio I discovered a splendid person. Leo, on the other hand, almost represents a restitution. The invitation he gave me to Sanremo was important for me, it allowed me to rewrite a page of my career.
So I asked him to come into Scorpio, which is a very important song for me. And his voice really gave something extra to the song.”
Last question to Fagnani: do you recognize yourself in a scorpion?
Oh yes, in part I would say yes, even if, if I think about it, I feel more like a lion, but I know that I can become a scorpion!
TRACK BY TRACK
ADL
ARTISTS OF LOVE is the last chapter of a story that no longer exists, or perhaps never existed. At the same time it is the first page of an unread book, of a new life, the blank page on which to write a new story.
It's a goodbye to Rome, a promise that almost comforts us, as we are projected towards the first step into the unknown; it is the awareness that changing cities can sometimes be revolution and salvation, certainly reconstruction. This is how I approached my move to Milan.
MATCHES feat ANTONIA
MATCHES is a series of memories, snapshots that remind us why certain stories fail to take off or stay in flight for a long time.
It's a song full of awareness…sometimes certain encounters are fire and nothing else.
It is a lucid analysis of the infinite never-successful attempts at a set-up, a constant alternation between a sweet surrender and still wanting to believe in it.
SCORPIO feat Leo Gassmann
SCORPIO gave the title to the entire album, perhaps because it is the central hub of everything, it is the turning point of a journey that I undertook almost 4 years ago, and which had as its goal “the meeting with myself”.
It's a sort of dialogue in the mirror, with my shadows, it's a request for an embrace, for a truce, for non-judgment, “to go home”.
GOODBYE MONSTER
In ARRIVEDERCI MONSTRO the love story is a pretext to celebrate a more important, perhaps larger, “funeral”. It's the struggle with the memories that still inhabit the mind and the chest, it's a concentration of melancholy that no longer has the power to drag us down, to make us feel bad.
We breathe a saving lightness, a new air, a projection into the future, as we finally say goodbye to the “monster”.
A THOUSAND HURRICANES
A THOUSAND HURRICANES tells of a rebirth, mine.
It's a hug, a confession of self-love, a letter I wrote to myself, completely stripped of any armor, in the mirror.
It's the realization that music has started playing for me again, making me feel good.
It's lucky, considering the “thousand hurricanes” we've overcome, to be able to meet after so long, with the same enthusiasm, I'd say it's magic.
If it were a movie, it would be the final scene where the protagonist faces the monsters and kills them all.
GIANTS
GIANTS is maturity.
After a dense piece of life, the stories that hurt us, after the falls and rises, we have learned the lesson, we have learned to let go, to give ourselves new opportunities.
It's the awareness that the only way to build… is to stay, not run away anymore, is to make peace with your monsters.
It's perhaps one of the most beautiful declarations of love I've ever written, both in the chorus and in the special.
It is a happy escape from performative logics, full of competition, judgments and fears, it is a race to the sea, a promise, a central question, an answer that moves. It's new life.
SENTIMENTALE feat Levante
SENTIMENTALE is a song that talks about love at the end of the line, the last hug, the crying that comes, without shame.
No anger, no resentment, just good melancholy, the one that teaches you to let go.
BELOW BELOW
SOTTO SOTTO is a summer manifesto, it is a sunset party on the terrace, facing the sea.
It's a request for lightness, so as not to get lost, to still remain together.
It's an admission of responsibility, it's melancholy and the desire to find oneself, it's the fear of not being strong enough to hold on tight.
AS YOU THINK
AS YOU THINK is the lightest chapter of this journey.
A song that can breathe, free, bright.
Inside the Aeolian sea, under the sea the nostalgia of those who loved strongly but now know how to let go. No resistance, no constraints… a finished story that no longer weighs, peace.
THE TRAILER
WEB & SOCIAL
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