Antonello Venditti Best Songs

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Christina Smith

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Aug 3, 2024, 5:56:57 PM8/3/24

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Antonello Venditti is a certain romanitas personified, and I think he\u2019s beyond super. As I mentioned in my second Vespa Tune he was present at the first proper date I went on with Massimo in June 2001. That distant dawn of the new millennium\u2014pre-9/11, people used phones to make calls, and social media hadn\u2019t been thought of\u2014was a different world.

Since then Venditti has provided a significant part of the soundtrack of my life here. I feel like I learned his songs entirely through osmosis: the product of a gentle but constant sottofondo seeping from tinny radios at mechanics\u2019 garages, ignored televisions in high corners of coffee bars, taxi drivers turning the radio up when a favoured song comes on. I like him so much that in June, on a last minute whim, we went to see him play with Francesco De Gregori at the Stadio Olimpico.

Today is Easter Sunday, and a battery of church bells are ringing out across my neighbourhood as I write. Which reminded me of his 1983 song Grazie Roma, when as in 2001 (the only other occasion was 1942, it\u2019s a big deal) AS Roma won the scudetto. It has the added bonus of having the single best music video of any song I\u2019ve ever seen, keep an eye out for the white piano inside the Colosseum: I feel 1983 with its shoulders, big sunglasses, and abundant hair may have been the ultimate year for the truest expression of romanitas. This video is the phenomenon distilled, enjoy it at its apogee!