"Le tasche piene di sassi" (transl. "The pockets full of stones"]) is a song by Italian singer-songwriterJovanotti. It was released on 11 March 2011 through Universal Music Italy as the second single from his twelfth studio album Ora.[1]
Composition
The song was written by Jovanotti and Franco Santarnecchi, under the music production of Michele Canova.[2] The singer explained that the meaning of the song is dedicate to his mother Viola Cardinali.[3][4]
Music video
The music video for the song, directed by Maki Gherzi was released on March 24, 2011, through the singer's YouTube channel. Jovanotti explained that the video is inspired by Bob Fosse's film Lenny:[5]
"It is a song that offers different possible readings, and making a video with only one visual point of view would have been limiting. It is a purely emotional song and so it was not at all easy to make a video. Then as sometimes happens, suddenly an idea came up that was interesting to us. Going around the net one night I happened to see Lenny, the Bob Fosse film, again. [...] Fosse in his cinema manages to portray the contrast and reciprocity between intimacy and stage. We decided to 'quote' the atmosphere of Lenny, the cinematography, even the shots. [...] I tell a story, not necessarily a comic story, a dramatic story, a biographical story ... a story. The viewer who will see the video will not hear what I am saying and will not even see me singing, but will see a man alone, in the dark, lit only by a bull's eye telling a story to an audience in semi-darkness, telling a story that is life, telling perhaps his life, perhaps telling the lives of those in the audience."
The singer described the cover as "among the most hardest" to perform because she had to "find a way that I didn't actually have to find, but I just had to follow the lyrics, and yet it took me a while to get this thing in focus".[11] In an interview with Radio Italia Solo Musica Italiana, Giorgia explained the decision to cover the song:[12]
"I chose it easily, it is true that it is a personal song, however that lyric so poetic is already a classic of our music, it gets straight to the soul and tells about a moment that sooner or later we all experience. The first time I heard it I cried like a desperate person, it was the first song I chose to do, I wanted to participate in that magic: I connect it very much to my son, reversing Lorenzo's idea in which instead it is the son who addresses his mother."
Jovanotti himself praised the Giorgia version, stating that "The arrangement, by Michele Canova, respects the original version but adds a new rhythm that makes Giorgia's interpretation even more special and unique. For me it is a great honor and a recognition that is worth so much, and I want to thank Giorgia".[13]
