Bologna, 24 May 2024 – ‘But how nice it is to go around the Bolognese hills‘. 25 years ago Cesare Cremonini hey Lunapop they made Italy discover the carefreeness of youth during the summer, better if with one wasp.
Cesare Cremonini celebrates 25 years of 50 special riding a Vespa (screenshot taken from the Instagram video)
50 specials celebrates his birthday and returns to the radio to celebrate the anniversary together with all the fans. The Lunapop song will play on the main Italian networks between 10am and 12pm Monday 27 May.
“Italian radios will say good morning by playing the song that coincides with my debut – the announcement of Cesare Cremonini on social media, complete with video riding the same Vespa as the original video clip – but which actually belongs to everyone and unites several generations around music since that Thursday 27 May 1999 which we cannot forget, because it takes us back to one of the happiest summers of our lives.”
The disc
When it came out song we were one step away from the new millennium, social networks were still far away, i record shops still the meeting point for millions of young people on the planet. The album would have had an immediate success, serving as soundtrack of that summer.
A very young scientific high school student sang it Sabin which spoke of the Bolognese hills and one wasp that takes away your problems. “I always thought that the secret of the song was hidden in the first four words – he continues Cremonini -. In the absence of the article to introduce them. ‘Rigged wasps/sixties’. They were the verses of a new generation that got straight to the point, flying from the first beat, like turning on the camera in an already moving scene, a door opening onto the floor full of a party. This is why the public at concerts doesn’t sing it, they shout it, making those words bounce in their mouths that have the scent of rock’n’roll of the late 50s, the music from which everything comes. Jerry Lee Lewis he was my idol as a kid and ‘Great Balls of fire’ it was the first song I loved.”
The success
In radio on May 22, 1999, no one knows where it came from ’50 Special’. No major record company behind him. It is in fact the Universea small independent label from Rome, to release the album that sounds Brit-pop but doesn’t have distorted guitars. It’s pure pop, but it tastes like music being played. A swipe of the piano and off we go, behind the pressing rhythm that opens the curtain of a song that lasts 3 minutes and 30 seconds straight. And his lyrics talk about youth, independence, freedom.
“Everything is simply perfect in that song, a pop miracle, a very rare event, 50 special is a masterpiece that doesn’t need time to become a classic because it was a classic from the first listen. A small big bang that generated the Cesare Cremonini universe, which from that moment on has never stopped expanding in every direction” states Lorenzo Cherubini, aka Jovanotti.
