Conversazioni Sull’Amore – Anni ’70 (Conversations About Love – 70-ies) is the first of a series of works in poster format emphasizing how cultural and social stereotypes were (and still are) conveyed through pop music and shape collective beliefs.
This specific edition is based on an analysis of popular Italian love songs of the end of the 60-ies and 70-ies, a moment in history when women started to stand up for their rights. The song snippets that compose the entire conversation emphasize the socially fully accepted dominant male role while the women were expected to be obedient and grateful for any king of attention. However, a few female singers of that time (f.e. Caterina Caselli, Mina, Nada, Rita Pavone) used their music to rebel. Their lyrics, innovative, and even shocking for the time, anticipated feminist arguments, for example claiming for women to take care of themselves and the possibility of choosing their partners and type of relationships.
Read at a distance of 50 years, some expressions seem ridiculous others are almost excruciating: The apparent happy love songs are filled with problematic notions of gender discrimination.
The work is accompanied by a playlist of the cited songs available for free on Spotify at this link: shorturl.at/hFMT7. The poster is available for download for free here.
The English translation is the following:
Gianni Morandi: Ask your mom to send you for milk, I have to tell you something about us…
Alberto Lupo: … you are my forbidden dream…
Mina: What are you? What are you? Really, what are you?
Umberto Tozzi: Let me hug a woman who is singing while ironing [the shirts], and then let me tease you before we make love…
Mina: Forgettaboutit!
Alberto Lupo: You are my past, my present…
Franco Battiato: 🎵 U-acciuuariuari… acciuuariuari 🎵🎵
Edoardo Bennato: Long live the mother! So in love with that skirt a little too long, so elegantly 50ies-style, always so honest…
Nada: I feel like a butterfly that can’t hum around the flowers anymore… 😦
Al Bano & Power [chorus]: Feel it! The air is filled with our love song that moves like a thought of happiness.
Umberto Tozzi: I looooove youuuuuu, I am, I looooove youuuu, actually a man with a warm heart but in the bedroom I command! But… I shiver…
Rita Pavone: Give me a hammer!!! […] I want to bang the head of those I can’t stand anymore… he he !
Franco Battiato: 🎵 U-acciuuariuari… acciuuariuari 🎵🎵
Edoardo Vianello: On your sweetest lips, the scent of seawater, I’ll smell it until the end of this summer of love
Mina: Well, at this point you can hit on me. Call me a torment, while you’re at it…
Lupo: Sometimes I don’t get you…
Mina: The roses and violins… this night, show them to another gal. I can listen to roses and violins only when I want to, and if I want to…
Gianni Morandi: You have to tell this ‘thing’ that I am jealous and if I see him again, I’ll smash his face!!!
Caterina Caselli: Everyone has the right to live according to their choices. The truth hurts, I know…
Umberto Tozzi: Do you remember who I am? Open the door to a knight made of toilet paper!
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