I Change My Favorite Artist Like I Change My Clothes

It seems as though in Italy, when a song is popular, it is the only song you hear everywhere you go. Sometimes it is hard to know whether it has soon become your favorite song because you love it, or because you have become brainwashed by hearing it all the time.

The number song on the Italian Top 100 Chart right now is “L’essenziale” by Marco Mengoni. I personally love ballads, so the first time I heard this song the smooth piano melody caught my attention right away. The song title literally translates to “The Essential” and has a beautiful meaning behind it.

I have said this before, but Italian pop music holds so much more value in the lyrics than the American music I am used to. In this song, he talks about letting the one he loves disappear from his life. He says he never truly appreciated his girlfriend until he let her walk out of his life. He realizes that all he did led to her pain and he knows he can’t take it all back, but he wants to try. He sees now that she is his muse, his hope for better days, his “essential.”

I find the concept behind these lyrics really different, because he talks about life as a constant war, saying that he is the one who led his girlfriend into the line of fire, when he should have been protecting her from the bad.

It is easy to say that the person you love is your everything, your forever, your baby, but to say that they are you “essential” is something very different. The song holds so much meaning behind it.

If you have ever been in a relationship that is worth being in, you have problems. There are constantly going to be ups and downs, and when there isn’t anymore, that is when you have to worry. If you’re fighting, at least you are fighting to keep something alive. It’s the silence I think you have to be afraid of. This song really hits the nail on the head when it comes to the idea that love is something that needs to be worked for. If you are ever fighting with the one you love and just play this song on repeat, you are bound to feel better. Even if you do not speak Italian, now that you know the general meaning behind the song I guarantee you will feel something when listening to it.

It has quickly become my favorite song. I know I have said this a million times about the Italian artists I have reviewed, but they all seem to get better by the week. There is always a new artist, a new single that blows my mind musically and lyrically.

If you do happen to check out this song, I would recommend listening to the entire album, #Prontoacorrere (Italy really loves its hash tags!). Every song on this album is better than the next. Mengoni is a very talented artist who rose to fame in 2009 after winning the Italian X Factor, and this is his fourth number one album on the Italian charts.

Sometimes it is hard for me to write these articles all the way from over here. I know that most of the artists I review are Italian, and that is difficult to really want to listen to something you may not understand back in the U.S. If you take the general meaning of the song, however, and really listen to the music, I think you’ll find it easy to connect like you would with any other music you listen to.

I would love to hear from you on Facebook if you ever check out any of these artists and just let me know your opinion. That way, I can keep writing these and know that good music isn’t going unrecognized.