Oltre (album)

Last updated
Oltre
Claudio Baglioni - Oltre.jpeg
Studio album by
ReleasedNovember 17, 1990 (1990-11-17)
Recorded
Genre
Length99 m
LanguageItalian
Label CBS Records International
Producer Claudio Baglioni
Claudio Baglioni chronology
La vita è adesso
(1985)
Oltre
(1990)
Io sono qui
(1995)

Oltre - un mondo uomo sotto un cielo mago, simply known as Oltre, is the eleventh studio album by Italian songwriter Claudio Baglioni, released on 17 November 1990 by CBS Italiana, a subsidiary label of CBS Records International. [1] The album is characterized by world music features and it was recorded in the Real World Studios of English songwriter Peter Gabriel and in several European recording studios. [1] Baglioni defined the album as the first of a trilogy about time: Oltre represents the past, Io sono qui is the present and Viaggiatore sulla coda del tempo represents the future.

Contents

The concept album divided critics due to its complexity and completely different format respect the previous works by Baglioni. [2] [3]

Baglioni in 1990 ClaudioBaglioni 1991.jpg
Baglioni in 1990

Recording

Baglioni90.jpg

In summer 1988, Baglioni began to compose a new album three years later the release of La vita è adesso . [4] First recording sessions were made in the Real World Studios near Bath, under the direction of Celso Valli and Pasquale Mineri, [4] [5] while Peter Gabriel was recording his soundtrack for The Last Temptation of Christ .

On Topolino n. 1703, Baglioni implicitly revealed in an interview that his new album would be entitled A presto. [4] Mineri said in an interview: [6]

[...] There is a complicated process if you want to work with Claudio [Baglioni]. In a very first step, he took me to listen only the instrumental part, but he wrote all short stuffs, lasting about twenty seconds. Like... consider... 120 or 150 bars on the piano, and other 100 on the guitar. Very short musical things of twenty seconds, thirty seconds max. Then, we continued to choose, among all of these pieces, those we liked and to give them a definition in the various structures of the song. I mean: this song of thirty seconds is good for a verse, that for a riff, that for a bridge. [...] Then we tried to put togher all of that pieces in all the possible ways, until we came to the phase with the completed songs which were more than twenty (at last we chose only twenty). The lyrics phase, due to his way of working, came just at the end and, once the disc was completed from the musical point of view, he wrote all the lyrics three times: he did not like them and trashed them, and he rewrote them again.

Pasquale Mineri

On the following 8 September, the Italian leg of worldwide tour Human Rights Now! was held in Turin and Baglioni took part as the local guest, but during his show a small group of hooligans near the stage began to boo and throw objects against him, because they considered the songwriter as not touched by the thematics and as out of place in a humanitarian concert led by Bruce Springsteen, Sting and Peter Gabriel, [4] [7] [8] despite Baglioni had sung songs adhering to the meaning of the event and, during the interview before the concert, he declared to be interested only for the cause of the event. [8] [9]

However, the controversy provoked a huge shock in Baglioni, who did not organize any new concert, and he continued to work on the album. In October 1989, presales of the album began with the temporary title Un mondo più uomo sotto un cielo mago ("A more human world under a wizard sky"). [4] There were gossips saying that Baglioni was not convinced about the album and had begun to rewrite all the songs, forcing CBS to postpone the release to 1990. [4] [10]

Meanwhile, recording session proceeded in different studios located in Europe, with the collaboration of international artists and collaborators of Peter Gabriel, like Tony Levin and Manu Katché, as well as Italian stars like Pino Daniele and Mia Martini. [1] Spanish guitarist Paco de Lucía and Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour took part to the project. Artists contributed with their native culture and music, giving to the album an ethnic sound. [11]

Composition

Oltre is a concept album which follows the story of the alter ego Cucaio, his maturation and his search for himself. The name of the character is inspired by the bad pronunciation that Baglioni had of his name when he was a little child. The songwriter said: [12]

Cucaio is the magical part of the disc, of this wizard sky which is not something impalpable but it is earthly. Cucaio is the man who can not properly pronounce his own name, who doesn't know where he originates neither where he's going; what are his anxieties, his problems and his joys. I believe that in everyone's life there are a human side and a magical one: the first suffers the most, because it knows that it can't emulate the second. This is Cucaio, and he represents the moment when moreover you should leave him in ordert to go beyond.

Claudio Baglioni

Along with the album, there is a little booklet with a stream of consciousness through which the author explains the Gusci ("Shells") containing meaning of the songs. [13] [14]

Disc one

Side A

Pino Daniele is a separated chapter. I was very impressed the great Neapolitan character in his voice, in his way to play: that beautiful voice and guitar wail. There's that end at sixth almost resembling a tarantella played in quarters... These are the stuffs that music offers to you: words not mix so easily, they are too heavy.

Claudio Baglioni
Mia Martini in 1973 Mia Martini 1973b.jpg
Mia Martini in 1973

I think that Stelle di stelle is one of the most beautiful songs ever made. It was an idea of Claudio, he called me and asked me if I was available to sing a track with him in the album.[...] The first time he made me listen to the song it was not exactly like that, as it was later developed by Claudio. It was a shorter track that we had to sing in unison. We had listened together to this first draft, I really liked that, and then Claudio re-called me and he said: 'I've listened to your voice, while you rehearsed with me, and I've changed completely the draft, practically creating a song inside another.

I thought it was a beautiful idea, also really new, because it is a cutting-edge song, no one had written it in that way, both for the melodic and harmonic side. He even added a new part of lyrics, while before we had to sing the same words, suddenly, my voice became a conscience's one.

With my presence, pessimism of the artist who does this journey backwards, and then stops to shine and disappears from the scene, is illuminated for a while by a bit of hope. And therefore I say him those things in order to lift his pessimism: ‘but could the sky end here, could the sea end before the horizon…’ I offer to him this hope which is basically the strength that the artist wants to receive in order to move on, because the road ahead is too hard.

He later added a melodic part, that is the one I sing, that is not consequent to the melody sung by him but it is written as if it is a bass score, even a double bass one. In the song there are very few instruments, there's a piano, drums - only brushes, quite refined and light - and there's that double bass which is marvellously record with three overlays and three different basses, so everything becomes more captivating and involving, my part is musically more intended as a drum between rhythmic and support of the double bass, it is also funny for me to enter in this melody in a complete different way from my normal interpretations.

MIa Marini
Side B

Paco de Lucìa is a musician that I always loved, for his extraordinary ability to create a so particular music, which lives of incredible beats following one other, too hard to count, and also an extraordinary harmonic ability, a world unrolling itself with continuous surprises.

Claudio Baglioni
Claudio Baglioni sings live Acqua dalla luna Claudio Baglioni live 90's.jpg
Claudio Baglioni sings live Acqua dalla luna

Disc two

Side A
Youssou N'Dour in 2009 YoussouNdour20090913.jpg
Youssou N'Dour in 2009

It is a song which is born from the idea that love, the true one, sometimes originates when the love ends. It is a song which in his final phase became more complete and just originated because I think that a man, when he meets a woman and truly falls in love for her, tries to hide himself from her and then to hide her – so her casing – from the world's eyes. I think that it is the moment when a men really falls in love. [...] Basically the whole song is autobiographical, but with such taste of autobiography that artists have in put together different biographies, that is to create a web through which is mysterious to enter. There a verse, in particular, which says: “The one, who'll be after you, will smell your scent thinking that is mine" [Chi ci sarà dopo di te respirerà il tuo odore pensando che sia il mio]”. And this is a verse of which I'm particularly fond, because I think that memory has a scent, absence of people is still measured by their scent.

Claudio Baglioni
Side B

I've always carried Umbria in my heart and eyes, up to Castelluccio. Castelluccio is a small town above Norcia and which I know since 1971; Franco Zeffirelli made me know it, on occasion of one of my first singins, of my first performances. I was the [Italian] singing voice of Francis of Assisi in the film Brother Sun, Sister Moon , just directed by Franco Zeffirelli, and since that year, loving in particular that place, I've begun a pilgrimage, practically almost every year, and I've even started to took inspiration for a song called La piana dei cavalli bradi. And I've begun to think about the fact that we are all a bit waiting, like horses in stables, and men and horses look alike after all, and the horse like the man tries to subdue itself, because it feels that there's something to which it can't say no. The horse has an incredible strength, but it decides in a certain moment to let stuff go, a bit like the man does. And the horse's eye, a bit like the man's mind, contains some sparks of craziness and restlessness. [...] I've imagined in this song that men are horses, both similar for their ability to wait and their incredible strength - which can be bended only with a reason – and just in this final when you begin to run until you fly: after all, this would be the dream of all people.

Claudio Baglioni, Mezzogiorno con..., Rai Radio 2, 19 May 1998

This album doesn't do a balance, on the contrary it is a disc without answers at the end, because as we wanted – I, together with other people – represent it also graphically, the essence of the disc is a long wave, and a wave doesn't find again itself, it can never rejoin itself from the opposite part, from the final one. So, it's a way to continue, to exist in a continuous metamorphosis, hoping sometimes to have answers, but answers are a true miracle. Anyway, the most important thing is to ask yourself what's happening. And I thing that the disc, in its musical texture but also in its – let's say – literary texture, can reflect that. It's a disc without a true final answer but a disc with many questions.

Claudio Baglioni, Maurizio Costanzo Show, 15 November 1990

Release

In October 1990, the second stereophonic radio station of RAI, RaiStereoDue, aired the first two tracks of the album one month before the official release. [4]

On the following 4 November, Claudio Baglioni had a serious car accident with his Porsche, having injuries on his hands and face, including the tongue. Medical bulletins confirmed later that the surgery would not hinder his musical career. [13] [49] [50] On 15 November, Baglioni was the only guest of Maurizio Costanzo Show on Canale 5, publicly appearing for the first time after the incident. [51]

Baglioni during an interview BaglioniMCS1990.jpg
Baglioni during an interview

On 17 November 1990, after three years since its announcement, the album was finally released in Italy with the title Oltre - un mondo uomo sotto un cielo mago was finally released in Italy and in 1991 the album was sold in all Europe (mainly in Spain, France and Germany) and America (Northern and Southern). [52]

In February 1991, CBS declared that the album sold more than 900 000 copies in Italy. It sold more than 6 million copies in the world. [53] [54]

Reception

Baglioni in 1990 Baglioni1990.jpg
Baglioni in 1990

Oltre surprised Italian music critics and journalists. In a review for TV Sorrisi e Canzoni, composer Ennio Morricone wrote: [5]

Here it is a songwriter [Baglioni] which has never standardize himself. He has always been coherent, never enslaved by "vices" which falsify the eventual originality that a good song must have.

Ennio Morricone

Critic Gino Castaldo wrote on La Repubblica: [3]

We should begin to took seriously mister Claudio Baglioni, songwriter by profession. [...] And let's say straightly that we are at the top levels of musical production [...] Magniloquence is evident, but after all it is a typical characteristic of Baglioni, who has done often excessive undertakings and it has to be seen in the context of this weird songwriter history, absolutely unique and all based on an inextinguishable desire for intellectual redemption that he has cultivated since when he was the biggest writer of songs for teenagers in love. [...] This time, ambition is truly unbridled, it is the one of the great allegory reuniting the sense of life, and here it is really hard to follow the speech, moreover supported by an outstanding musical work. [...] If Baglioni demonstrates to be a poet, it is just in some beautiful melodic intuitions, where his talent shines without any ambiguity. And there is more in those crumbs of notes than in all the unrealistic literary saga on which the disc is pivoted.

Gino Castaldo, La Repubblica

Track listing

Disc 1

All tracks are written by Claudio Baglioni

No.TitleLength
1."Dagli il via"5:46
2."Io dal mare (featuring Pino Daniele)"5:28
3."Naso di falco"5:16
4."Io lui e la cana femmina"4:16
5."Stelle di stelle (featuring Mia Martini)"3:23
6."Vivi"4:21
7."Le donne sono"4:40
8."Domani mai (featuring Paco de Lucía)"5:09
9."Acqua dalla luna"4:31
10."Tamburi lontani"5:49
Disc 2

All tracks are written by Claudio Baglioni

No.TitleLength
1."Noi no"5:14
2."Signora delle ore scure"4:50
3."Navigando"4:03
4."Le mani e l'anima (featuring Youssou N'Dour)"5:22
5."Mille giorni di te e di me"5:38
6."Dov'è dov'è (featuring Oreste Lionello)"4:55
7."Tieniamente"3:44
8."Qui Dio non c'è"5:38
9."La piana dei cavalli bradi"4:56
10."Pace"5:41

Personnel

Credits from the booklet. [1]

Credits

See also

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References

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  2. "Rassegna stampa – "Corriere della Sera", "Il Tempo"" (in Italian). 17 November 1990. Retrieved 2020-08-11.
  3. 1 2 Castaldo, Gino (1990-11-17). "Dove corre Baglioni? Cerca il senso della vita". la Repubblica (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-08-13.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Caggiani 2010, p. 15.
  5. 1 2 "Da riscoprire: la storia di 'Oltre' di Claudio Baglioni". Rockol (in Italian). 2015-04-23. Retrieved 2020-08-13.
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  7. Castaldo, Gino (1988-09-08). "Perché proprio Baglioni". la Repubblica (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-08-13.
  8. 1 2 Savelli, Walter (2012-04-14). "Un assoluto desiderio di giustizia". Walter Savelli (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-08-13.
  9. Claudio Baglioni - amnesty international (1988) on YouTube.
  10. Tempini, Luca. "Oltre". Reginella (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-08-13.
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  12. Bianchi, Stefano (December 1990). "Claudio Baglioni". Tutto: 21.
  13. 1 2 Caggiani 2010, p. 16.
  14. "Un mondo uomo sotto un cielo mago". Claudio Baglioni - Un Solo Mondo Noi (in Italian). 2010-10-14. Retrieved 2020-08-14.
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  37. 1 2 3 Caggiani 2010, pp. 107–109.
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  49. Claudio Baglioni - TG dell'incidente (1990) on YouTube.
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  53. Assante, Ernesto (1991-02-19). "Lucio Dalla è il re di denari". la Repubblica (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-08-13. [...] Il caso più interessante è certamente quello di Claudio Baglioni e del suo doppio album Oltre: la casa discografica dichiara vendute ben novecentomila copie del disco [...]
  54. "Baglioni Signs in Exclusive Management Pact With Zard" (PDF). Music & Media. 8 (23): 8. 17 August 1991. Retrieved 2020-08-11 via WorldRadioHistory.com.

Bibliography