Column Nothing New: How Adriano Celentano Invented American – Culture

Sometimes children imitate what foreign languages ​​sound like to them. Pucker up your lips and say lots of things with Ö and Ü, and that should be like French or something. Adriano Celentano did exactly the same thing, only with American. And public. As a song. He then explained that he had always wanted to write something that sounded American, because what he had recorded and performed several times on Italian television in the early 1970s raised a few questions. First and foremost: What did what he was singing actually mean?

The answer: nothing. It’s gibberish. Fantasy language. Anything that sounds like American English to Italian ears. You have to hear the title of the song sung by Celentano in order to understand how the principle works. Written it just looks long and bulky, more like the Latin name of a drug – “Prisencolinensinainciusol” – but when Celentano sings it, every syllable stretches like a chewing gum, with Californian gargled Rrrrr and everything is played out in the throat, it sounds really American . It is also all clear while he sings. “Eni go for doing peso ai / in de col mein seivuan”, or similarly loud lines of text, and you immediately understand that the song is about a Jessica from Pennsylvania whose daddy drives a pink Chevrolet. Or a guy named Johnny who has a guitar but no longer a girl. Or of Billy, for whom everyone who has ever seen him predicted a great future, but he gambled everything away.

The best part of all the fun, which probably nobody should be able to do today without many being offended again, is that the music is really good too. Actually Celentano probably wanted to do something Bob Dylan-esque, but luckily he has way too much funk in his blood for that, and so there are brass sections that sound like James Brown, a happy nonsense chorus and a rhythm that is far too excited prances to land in the forever rainy singer-songwriter corner. Oh Italian pop, what were you beautiful.

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