Italian Protest Song: 'A Guy Who Loved Beatles & Rolling Stones, Just Like Me', Esercizi di Lingue e letterature classiche

Scarica Italian Protest Song: 'A Guy Who Loved Beatles & Rolling Stones, Just Like Me' e più Esercizi in PDF di Lingue e letterature classiche solo su Docsity! Martina Magrì Mr. Johnston American Lit January 24th 2017 Music of Vietnam: “C’era un ragazzo che come me amava i Beatles e i Rolling Stones” “There was a guy who, just like me, loved the Beatles and the Rolling Stones” is a song composed by Mauro Lusini and Franco Migliacci, and performed by Gianni Morandi. Released in 1966, the protest song obtained a very positive outcome and remained so popular that in February 1967 the single peaked at first place for three consecutive weeks in the Italian hit parade. It is, nowadays, one of the songs that marked the history of Italian music. The song was played and appreciated by different artists and people, but it was still censored by RAI television and audio for polemic towards politics of a friendly state. Although Morandi wasn’t happy about it, he accepted to change the lyrics from Vietnam to just a murmured “tatatata”. His attempts to protest against the war, though, did not stop. He kept saying that he fell in love with the song from the first moment he heard it; he wanted to raise his voice against this tragic event that was causing a big conflict and general discontent in the United States. Operation Crimp was just happening in Vietnam when the song was written and then released, which made the atmosphere even more tense. The song was also an important step for Morandi’s career, being his first politically active music piece. The song received a lot of negative critics by the media, because of the strong, judgmental lyrics, like “He shoots to the Vietcong” or “Now he is dead in Vietnam”. It was a song of protest, which apparently Italian civilians appreciated. Joan Beaz, an American singer, sang it in Italian in her tour. The words in the song, though they were simple and concise, well-expressed and showed the disapproval and the peaceful ideals of the singer. The message was, of course, that war wasn’t a good thing or necessary either, and was killing innocent young boys like the one the song is about.