Franco Battiato

*2025 stock* Every Franco Battiato song is a universe to be rediscovered: Battiato is one and a hundred thousand, so many are the faces shown by the Sicilian artist during his long career and dozens are the songs that have been indelibly stamped in the memory of the Italian public.
Franco Battiato's creations have never been “simple” songs but true sound journeys that in just a few minutes take the listener to discover cultures of faraway places, mysticism, philosophy, fragments of memories, quotations high and low. Each song by this great and unique artist contains so many links to other worlds as to leave one stunned. With a special feature: the extraordinary ability of Our Lord to always zero in on melodies that immediately get in your bloodstream, that once you hear them, they never leave you.

In this bizarrely titled album Come Un Cammello in una Grondaia, Battiato strips away the pop instrumentation-no bass, guitar and drums, the arrangements rely on the classical orchestra under the direction of Maestro Giusto Pio, enhanced by the use of synthesizer. Four new songs are flanked by four nineteenth-century lieder by Wagner, Martin, Brahms and Beethoven vocally reinterpreted by Franco, stripping them of the used solemnity of bel canto lirico with the result of actualizing and humanizing them. Inside stands out Povera Patria, which won the 1992 Targa Tenco as the best song of the year, reaching 10th place in the charts with over 250,000 copies sold. The title is a quote from Al-Biruni, a Persian scientist who lived in the 12th century, who used to utter that phrase to indicate the inadequacy of his own language in describing scientific topics.