It is the romantic voice of an entire generation, Italian accent for stories that have lived for decades to sell 70 million records, turned into an icon of melodic song since its origins, when in 1993 it won the Sanremo festival with La solitude, a subject that he recorded in Spanish as La soledad. In fact, Laura Pausini has turned Spanish into her “other language”, as she defined it in Seville at the press conference to present herself as the winner of the Person of the Year award, in a gala that had surprises such as the interpretation of the artist’s themes by Alejandro Sanz, Ana Mena, India Martínez and Malú, who sang Volveré contigo and the aforementioned La soledad. A small taste of what awaits today at the presentation of the main awards.
“I am the most Latin Italian in the world”, ratified last night the author of hits such as Se fue, En cambio no and Amores extraños, as she did the day before with an emotional memory of Rafaella Carrà, who die two years ago “It is difficult to explain the adoption, but she and I feel part of a family with the Latin audience”, a communion that is ratified with the new award, recognition not only of a musical career, but also of his humanitarian commitment , who has taught him “to respect differences”: “It’s difficult, but we would achieve it if we didn’t put the word hate above it, which is the word of this millennium”.
The “different”, the one who is not part of the majority, has been Pausini’s companion since childhood, a fact that has turned him into an icon of the LGTBI movement. “As a child I was fascinated to meet someone who was not like me, and when I met them I saw that they were like me”, she explained with a smile to remember that she was already working to make them visible in the nineties, “I made a clip in which featured a couple of men kissing, and it caused quite a stir, especially in my country.”
A consciousness that has led him almost from the beginning of his career to avoid gender in his songs, “I have always written about love, but without sex, because when there are love stories they have no gender”.
About to start a new tour, Pausini reaffirmed his bond with the Spanish language, a language he learned from his father, a humble musician in a piano bar, with whom he began singing as a teenager. “In the summer, tourists asked me for songs in their languages ??and my father taught me songs by Gloria Estefan, from bossa nova, in English and in French. My father gave me the literal translation, and he taught me that with songs you talk to people”.
It was because of this learning that, when he was asked to translate La soledad into Spanish, at only 18 years old he told the record company: “I want to record the whole album in Spanish”. From this experience, he saw that he liked to interpret his lyrics in other languages, a habit he has maintained for 30 years in different languages.
The opposite has happened with Spanish: “I have even dreamed in Spanish, which made me realize that it is my other language. It was at the end of the nineties, one day I woke up speaking in Spanish with my partner.” That’s why he says he doesn’t see himself singing only in Italian: “I feel Latina, I’ll never abandon Spanish”.
