“I’m a Mediterranean boy at bottom ,” says singer-songwriter Jack Savoretti. “It’s where I feel happiest.”
But, stuck inside over the last year, he did not have many chances to indulge that zeal . So he began to daydream.
“Looking out the window wasn’t enough anymore. So I had to make this type of escapism – a vacation , a getaway, in my head.”
As his mind drifted back to childhood memories of sun-kissed beaches and swimming off the Italian coast, he began to imagine a soundtrack – filled with the sounds of Demis Roussos, Iglesias , Gipsy Kings, Jacques Brel and Italian disco.
They’re all artists he thinks the united kingdom , with its strange aversion to foreign language music, has omitted on.
“Jacques Brel’s Song Of Old Lovers – La Chanson Des Vieux Amants – to me it is the greatest love song ever. It’s untouchable,” he says. “And I’ve spent numerous nights after too many bottles of wine, translating it word for word for my friends.
“I got so sick and uninterested in doing that i made a decision to write down my very own versions of those French, Spanish, German, and Italian songs and make them in English.”
The result’s Europiana, the star’s seventh album and therefore the follow-up to his first UK favorite , Singing To Strangers. He claims, rather boldly, that Europiana is a completely new genre, drawing on his Swiss-Italian-British-American upbringing to make something unique.
“It’s the music of my childhood summers, remade for today,” he explains.
The album was created together with his band in his Oxfordshire home last summer with the windows wide open. “The sun and fun seeped into the songs,” he recalls.
Jack Savoretti and Jemma Powell
image captionMany of the album’s songs were inspired by spending lockdown together with his wife, Jemma Powell, and their children
The sonic palette are going to be familiar to anyone who’s ever taken a package tour or watched Eurovision – albeit with slightly more class. But, whatever you are doing , don’t expect Savoretti to throw his name within the ring for next year’s Song Contest.
“No, because Eurovision doesn’t represent what’s happening in Europe musically,” he says. “It represents what’s happening in Europe on television.
“It really highlights how every country does showbusiness – but not music.”
With that out of the way, we calm down to travel through his new album, track-by-track, exploring the influences and experiences that structure Europiana.
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1) I Remember Us
The album starts with the sound of Savoretti’s wife and daughter singing an easy , naïve melody – fixing the album’s themes of reconnecting with family.
“I would never have written this song, if we hadn’t been forced to be reception together. For me, last year was really about rediscovering my wife and myself, as a few and as lovers, as friends, as partners, as parents.” (It must have gone well – the couple had a replacement baby daughter two months ago).
“Lockdown was suddenly this moment of ‘Oh, I remember us’,'” he says. “And that was the seed for the remainder of the album – because I already knew the sound and therefore the setting. I just didn’t know the characters within the film.”
2) Secret Life
Jack Savoretti
image captionThe singer says European music often has an innocence and naïveté that’s missing from English-language songs
“The song is actually about coming to terms with yourself, warts and every one . Everybody has this tiny secret life. that does not mean it’s riddled with sin – although it always is!
With echoes of the shop Boys’ it is a Sin, the song features a vocable interlude where Savoretti and his wife, actress and painter Jemma Powell, whisper to every other: “I won’t tell if you do not tell.”
“That really threw my band,” the singer laughs. “They were like ‘Is that Jemma? Aren’t you talking about your secret life?’. and that i said ‘why wouldn’t she be a neighborhood of my secret life?’.
“Sometimes your lover could be your secret life. In my case, we’ve a shared experience we wish to keep private. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re hiding stuff.”
3) Who’s Hurting Who (ft Nile Rodgers)
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“Having Nile on board was so important, because he’s the godfather of Europiana – and he didn’t even realize it .
“With Chic, Nile took disco-funk music, which was a quintessentially underground, African-American style in black clubs and gay club and made it mainstream in America.
“Then it had been embraced by European artists – who didn’t face an equivalent struggles he faced. For them, it had been glamorous, it had been sort of a luxury item. It wasn’t an underground thing, it had been aspirational, and it created what I call Europiana. And without that, we wouldn’t have had Daft Punk and Phoenix.”
4) When You’re Lonely
A song about missing someone when they’re gone, and reminiscing about falling crazy – with vocals from 80s pop legend John Oates, a squiggly synth solo and a splash of accordion for that continental touch.
“I do not know if I should say this, but in our relationship, distance has always made the guts grow fonder,” says Savoretti. “We’re so wont to being apart, that we love returning together. It’s such a neighborhood of our relationship that not having that this year was interesting.
“Homeschooling was particularly tough. I did attempt to put my two cents in at the start – then very quickly both my children and my wife realised that i used to be distracting quite anything.
“I was told to go away the space , basically.”
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5) quite Ever
Jack Savoretti as a toddler
image captionThe singer was born in England, raised in Switzerland and Italy and partly educated within the US
“I literally say within the song, ‘Looking back on all my memories with such a lot joy / Summers spent in Italy once I was a boy’. It’s just like the handbook of the album.
“I really love that idea of the narrator turning to the audience and explaining why they’re listening.”
A stripped-back ballad, the song consists solely of Savoretti’s raspy voice and a sweeping grand . Does he feel any pressure when he has got to sing with such sparse accompaniment?
“Not in the least , i buy off thereon pressure, especially live. I enjoy the intimacy of that moment. it’s terrifying, but when it works it’s magic.”
6) an excessive amount of History
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“I did consider this album as a vinyl record, and this is often the side two, the last half of the show. You’re at a celebration within the south of France, on some yacht by some sea. you are a bit sunburned, the salt’s still on your skin, and you’re having a primary cocktail within the evening, and it’s getting to be an excellent night.”
The lyrics are about spending time with the people that know you best, who have “seen the great and bad” and “remind me from where I came”.
“Leaving London was specialized for that,” says the singer. “Because in London I knew tons of individuals but I did not have tons of friends. i feel in my 20s i used to be like ‘Would you be my friend? Would you be my friend?’. you are a bit desperate – you’re just trying to desire you belong.
“Whereas, out here within the countryside, I realised I’m at an age where I’ve got a reasonably damn good group already. I’ve got a reasonably solid band of brothers.”
7) Dancing within the front room
“Very early during lockdown, I realised that Covid was scaring my wife and scaring my kids. it had been very macabre sitting every evening, watching what percentage people died. So I created this thing called Fabulous Fridays, which was a celebration every Friday night.
“We came up with a topic hebdomadally – so we had Italian night, we had Spanish night, we had French night, we had Mexican night. it had been usually pretty cultural, but sometimes it had been , like, the best Showman night, and that we went crazy. We literally had proper dance-offs within the front room .
“That’s once I started rediscovering Europiana. because I started playing tons of Gipsy kings, tons of Boney M, tons of Diana Ross, tons of Chic. And my daughter called me out and said, ‘Papa, why don’t you create music like this?’.”
8) Each and each Moment
“The day before scripting this , I learned to play Dreams by Fleetwood Mac – which whole song only has two chords. therefore the next day I awakened and that i was like, ‘I’m gonna write a song with two chords, too.’
“I did it quite as a joke – but I sent it to my manager and he was like ‘this is possibly the simplest song you have ever written’.”
9) The Way You Say Goodbye
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“This is that the song I’ve always wanted to write down , i can not hide it.
“I’ve always wanted to possess a song where I could sit at a piano with a glass of wine and a cigarette and sing conversationally – almost like it’s being made up as you go.
“It’s my Jacques Brel, Charles Aznavour moment. it is the olive within the martini glass. once you leave the club and you rehearse the hotel lobby, this is often what’s playing.”
10) Calling Me Back To You
“This was written with my old flame Gizmo Varillas. He’s from the north of Spain, which is on the Atlantic, and i am from the Mediterranean – and it’s funny because all we do is mention the ocean .
“And so we wrote this song a few lighthouse, about the thing that pulls us back. As someone who has travelled tons , albeit i used to be born in England, I sometimes desire a foreigner.
“But the one place I do feel reception is by the ocean . that provides me a way of belonging, then we wrote a song that image captionThe star plans to travel on the road in September
“This may be a little bit of a lullaby – a song from a father to his children. What’s that great line Thumper says in Bambi? If you cannot say something nice, don’t say nothing in the least .
“We are during a time immediately where everybody is pretty vicious. All the diligence we’ve put into the last 100 years about becoming more civil has gone out the window, because we’re ready to discuss the web with none repercussions, or seeing how it makes people feel.
“So the song is saying be kind, a war of words isn’t the solution . After the year we’ve had, I wanted to finish the album on something hopeful.”
Bringing things full circle, the album closes with Savoretti’s children singing the refrain: “Maybe love remains the solution .”
“I was worried it might sound cheesy,” he says, “but you cannot be cynical once you hear them singing it.”
“I just knew, this is often how i would like to finish the album, this is often often how i would like to finish my career! If this is the last item I do, I’m good.
“I genuinely get choked up whenever I hear it.”