Last: «I don’t know any peers who vote or go to church. Being young is terrible.”

«Being young today is terrible. Because you have no points of reference.”
What do you mean, Last?
“I don’t know any kids my age who go to vote, and no one who goes to church.”

Perhaps there is a link between the two things. What do you vote for?
«I have never voted in my life. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m not proud of it, I’m not ashamed of it. Of course it’s not the young people’s fault.”

Whose then?
«About politics. Politics is poor. He doesn’t talk to kids and he doesn’t even try. He doesn’t speak to me who is 28 years old; let alone an eighteen year old. We are tired of this split between right and left. Imagine what effect a politician would have if he said: I choose neither the right nor the left. I choose the high.”

Left and right exist. Forever.
«These are tiring contrasts. Fascists and communists: young people can’t take it anymore. What is the left? The hypocrisy of do-goodism? What is the right? The nastiness of those who close the ports to those who die at sea?

What do you think?
«They are complex topics, I don’t like to close them in three lines, but I don’t like hiding what I think either. Immigration has always existed and we are all someone’s immigrants: being born in Rome instead of Bamako, where with Unicef ​​I saw firsthand how to live, is not talent, it’s ass; those born in a war and terrorism zone have the right to live their lives elsewhere. Is this left-wing?”.

They say.
«But to give another example, if I am at home with my girlfriend, my family, and a criminal enters, to defend my girlfriend, my family, I shoot him. Is this right-wing?

I see her as belligerent.
«But no, I don’t even have a gun, I don’t even think about it. And legalize soft drugs? Is he right or left? I don’t understand why one can drink a bottle of whiskey until he dies, and another can’t have a joint in peace.”

I don’t know if Schlein would agree.
«Dunno, do you know that sometimes I struggle to understand what you’re talking about?».

Meloni claims to be a woman of the people, of the suburb.
«Maybe that’s why it’s the most voted? But I don’t hear anyone, not even Meloni, addressing what young people care about. I don’t see politicians on the street, in bars, among people. There is no good news on TV. Wars. Bombs. On X they are already announcing the next pandemic. But do we realize what a trauma the pandemic has been for children?”.

How did she get through it?
«To write songs. I had to give up an already organized 15 stadium tour. But for heaven’s sake, I know very well that for others it was much worse. There is a generation that has not made the journey of maturity, that found itself stuck at home when it was time to take flight, that has forever lost opportunities that never come back.”

Talking about mental health is no longer taboo. Do you always have a psychotherapist?
“Certain. Too many kids spend ten, twelve hours a day scrolling videos on TikTok. Social media numbs you. They rape your brain.”

She has 3 million and 600 thousand followers on Instagram.
«We are all involved in social media. But it’s one thing to post a photo; another spend the day there. Sometimes I fall for it too; let alone a twelve year old. You watch a video of someone cooking, a video of someone falling from the third floor, a video about your favorite team, a video about your singer, a video of someone falling on a bicycle… It’s addictive. We’re falling asleep. We are becoming amoebas.”

Does virtual life prevail over real life?
«I don’t know, but I see that people don’t leave their homes anymore. He is afraid on the street, in the suburbs and beyond. The young people are anesthetized. Stop. They wait for a tomorrow that doesn’t come and won’t come. They post things they don’t have. They eat at home but pretend to be at the restaurant.”

To change politics we need to do it.
«But songwriters engage in politics. In my small way I think I’m doing politics with my songs. “On the side of the last to feel first” is a political verse. “Alba”, I think is a political song: it talks about interiority, the idea of ​​overcoming oneself. A doctor who works in the private sector and goes to hospitals on Saturdays to treat the sick for free is doing politics. Like a doctor who goes to a war zone to treat the wounded. Everyone must do politics with their own means and knowledge. Of course, politics matters up to a certain point.”

What do you mean?
«I don’t think Biden is in charge. Biden is an interlocutor between the people and those who are really in charge.”

Who I am?
«The owners of the Market. The giants of digital commerce. Those who don’t pay taxes: a shameful indifference. The State persecutes the plumber who evaded twenty euros, and is not interested in those in tax havens. Whoever has more must give more. Instead we have built a world where the richer you are, the less you pay. A world in reverse.”

Here we are in Vannacci.
«Vannacci is uncommentable».

What else don’t you like about politics?
«It seems to me that globalism is being exaggerated. The beauty is in the fact that we are different. I am different from a Chinese. Not above, nor below; different. Diversity must be defended, not exploited by politics.”

In universities many students are committed to Palestine.
«War is always wrong, of course. I was born in 1996, I was born during the war, my first memories are linked to the war in Iraq, my generation grew up seeing bombs on television. I don’t hold the Palestinian flag just as I don’t hold the Israeli flag, because it’s not a football match.”

And do you go to church?
«I used to go there when I was little. As you grow up you become more realistic.”

Do you believe in God?
«I’m always looking. I need to believe, I feel great faith inside. But it is one thing to believe in a god, in an entity, in energies; and I believe in energies, in what Jung called synchronicities: how to meet the right person at the right time. Another thing is to believe in the Church.”

Pope francesco?
«I listen to him when he calls for an end to wars. I agree, of course. I don’t know if the Pope can do more, he certainly can’t go to the Gaza border. Honestly, I don’t think he is a point of reference for young people either. I know few who call themselves Christians. Even if in reality we are.”

Benedetto Croce said it.
«If you are engaged and you cheat, you feel guilty: and this comes to you from Christian culture. Like attachment to family. But if you turn to the Church to find meaning in things, you can be disappointed.”

Why?
«We try to make sense of things. But reality doesn’t make sense. The reality is terrible. It’s disgusting. War, fear, submission, closure: watch out for that, don’t do that. This is why we build ourselves an elsewhere.”

What is elsewhere for you?
«Drinking a good wine with my friends. Watch Shameless, an American series, with my girlfriend Jacqueline. Songs. It’s not escaping from the world; it is looking at it with the eyes of elsewhere. As a boy, elsewhere was the little park of San Basilio. The one that Mayor Gualtieri dedicated to me. I’m really proud of it. For years people have already been calling it the Ultimo park. You could already find it on Google too.”

Doesn’t it impress you to have a dedicated park while you’re alive?
«But I hope that it will soon be named after someone else. Someone who goes there and says: if Ultimo, who came up alone without the famous kick in the ass and without any musician in the family, made it, I can do it too. I also created a label with my friends, Ultimo Records: alone, with my songs, in a jungle like the record industry. I fight against everyone, with a flower.”

Why does he say he owes everything to Clemente Zard?
«Because he took me after I had played in front of eight people at the Testaccio fish market, and brought me here».

With your next tour you will have filled 33 stadiums, including the Olimpico 7 times, plus the Circus Maximus. How do you explain this success?
«It should be asked to those who appreciate me. Maybe because I’m real. Honest. One hundred percent transparent. Because I don’t write songs to make them a success, but to bring out what’s inside me. When I sing, I believe it. You can tell me whatever you want, even that I make you shit, someone told me and I shook his hand; but you can’t tell me that I don’t believe it, that I don’t feel what I sing. And I think people understand when something is true. People cling to me, to my words. They hug me in the street, they cry.”

And what do you think about rappers and trappers? Every now and then someone ends up in jail.
«If they sing what they have seen and experienced, fine. They are wrong when they boast about it. Like drugs: you can talk about it; Don’t say how cool you feel doing drugs.”

You are a friend of Venditti, and also of De Gregori.
«They are two great songwriters, but they are different. De Gregori has very refined writing, the album in which Dylan sings is extraordinary. Antonello has a gut style of writing, which I feel is closer to me.”

And Vasco?
«I spent two days with him in Los Angeles. Vasco is unique and inimitable. There will be no one like him again.”

How did the concert on May 1st go?
«It was an important step in my career. Perhaps it is no coincidence that for the first and last time it was done at the Circus Maximus, a magical place for me. I started singing Planets, and was overwhelmed by the singing of the crowd; that’s why I left the microphone to her.”

Will he return to Sanremo?
“I do not believe”.

In 2019 she won the popular vote. Baglioni says it is wrong to have three juries, just one would be enough.
«Maybe there could even be three. But experts would have to vote without knowing the popular vote, and therefore without being able to agree to make someone lose. As also happened to Geolier.”

Is he still a hypochondriac?
“Very, very much. Ever since, to prepare for the entrance exam to secondary school, I drank a pot of coffee, and I got tachycardia. Even now it comes back to me, because when I talk I get hot. And then the gastric reflux: I’ve been taking the gastroprotector for seven years, now I had to stop. I had bet with Mauro, my doctor friend, that I wouldn’t live to turn 27. I lost”.

May 19, 2024

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