Maybe not everyone today remembers her name, but certainly everyone has heard her sing that song at least once in their life “Do not love me”, the poignant song with which he won the Sanremo Festival of Nuove Proposte in 1992 paired with Aleandro Baldia song that also thanks to the Spanish version recorded by Jennifer Lopez it became a worldwide success. But Francesca Alotta has never argued with what she was. She has none of that slightly acidic and resentful attitude that show business meteors sometimes display.
Betrayal, cancer, rebirth: “Today I am different”
In her everything is joy and gratitude towards a life that yet has reserved for her pain, obstacles and great trials to overcome. A marriage foundered upon the discovery of his betrayal when she was pregnant, her lost baby and the bitter discovery of no longer being able to become a mother. Then the malignant tumor in the uterus, the radiotherapy and everything that follows. Test after test which today however gives us back a Francesca “Different”, just as the title of his new album dictates. Different from others, “because we are all unique and we must claim our specificity”. Different from family expectations, “because I am certain of one thing, if I could have become a mother I would have loved and accepted my son exactly as he was. Children should be loved, not fought, not shaped according to one’s expectations, not denied.” Different “because I have changed a lot, inside and out. And my voice is also different, more hoarse, more rock”. Different above all because now Francesca Alotta, a talented 55-year-old singer-songwriter from Palermo, knows that not even a moment of her life is wasted, “because after the tumor it is as if I had been born a second time, it is as if I had been granted by God a second chance and I have no intention of wasting it, suffering from toxic loves and giving importance to people who don’t have it.”
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srcset=\u0022https:\/\/www.milleunadonna.it\/media\/Screenshot_2024_06_04_alle_10_09_09_ec36ecafd9\/preview.webp 754w\u0022 sizes=\u0022100vw\u0022 width=\u0022755\u0022 height=\u0022469\u0022 \/\u003E\u003Cimg loading=\u0027lazy\u0027 src=\u0027https:\/\/www.milleunadonna.it\/media\/Screenshot_2024_06_04_alle_10_09_09_ec36ecafd9\/preview.webp\u0027 alt=\u0022Francesca Alotta\u0022 class=\u0027figure-img\u0027 width=\u0022755\u0022 height=\u0022469\u0022\/\u003E\u003C\/picture\u003E\u003C\/figure\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003C\/div\u003Eu0022]’)
And to my ex singing: “You’re an asshole”
Here she is then surrounded by the love of family, friends and “those furry children, all foundlings, who give me priceless joy and affection”. Above all, here she is again on stage with a new album: 10 songs that are like so many children, pieces of real life, sweaty, difficult to handle but forcefully claimed by today’s Francesca. A woman who, in her ex, has toxic love for her who betrayed her when she was fragile and fighting the disease that struck her, does not tell her and in “You know what I say?” he sings laughing “you’re an asshole”. “In the past I was too accommodating, too patient. Maybe I finally understood that you have to have the courage to be respected and to cut back, because life is too short to accept feeling bad even for just a moment. And indeed I invite all women not to let themselves be discouraged because for a man the wrong story is never worth it.”
When my mother told me I should have been born a boy
But there is also another song, this time in Sicilian dialect, which very well describes the Francesca of today and yesterday. Is titled “Vastasa” which means “rude” and it was what my mother told me when faced with my rebellions, my being a tomboy, she told me: “You should have been born a boy. Here I want to dedicate it today to all the women who simply want to be themselves. And in particular to all the Afghan and Iranian women who fight to simply be free to be themselves.”
