“We found out she was pregnant. We could do without them, thank you.”
Did they really say that?
“There was an email exchange that said: Obviously the lady will not be able to keep her promise and we are looking for someone else.” But they had done everything themselves. I was shocked. I stood there and thought: Let’s get off to a good start.”
A quick note on salary given the news of the pregnancy. “We tell each other a lot: We are ahead, everything has changed.” And instead you see the empty declaration of resignation (sui generis, but that’s all), even if that’s your name Nina Zilli and you are a million-selling singer. She calls it “my first reality check about motherhood.” Which would then be “the blow”.
Give us some details.
“In January 2023 I was expecting Anna Blue (who would have been born on June 2nd in Milan, editor’s note). On Viva Rai 2, Fiorello and Fabrizio Biggio revealed that they are pregnant. Almost no one knew and I was disappointed because I would have liked to pass on the news, luckily I had at least told my parents. Well, it’s over. I didn’t expect what happened next.
The “after” is the cancellation of a contract that gets Nina Zilli – pseudonym of Maria Chiara Fraschetta, born in 1980 in Piacenza and Milanese by adoption – between her head and neck.
Who wrote it?
“In the days of Fiorello and Biggio’s “spoiler,” I was negotiating to attend a private event. The organizers contacted my staff and told me they had heard the news and asked when the pregnancy was due. Seriously, he was told. They just beat around the bush a bit, because straight away it was: No, thank you. I was pregnant and that obviously made me unreliable in her eyes. If she has to give birth, she won’t be ready, let’s change the horse. How friendly, how thoughtful: calm. They withdrew the proposal without even knowing whether I was really afraid not to do it.”
His reaction?
“Thank God management was there as a filter. I was four months pregnant and they fired me from my job because I was pregnant like it was the most natural thing in the world. Isn’t it the year 2023? The canceled event was planned almost a month after the birth, two weeks after Blue’s birth – with doctor’s approval, I’m not unconscious – I was standing on a stage in Rimini. Ready or not ready, gentlemen, I should have said it: or not?
She may have lost a contract, but she made up for it in spades. As a reminder: With the baby bump, she also shot a video of her latest success (“Innamorata”) and has just opened her first exhibition. Together with his fellow friends Alvin and Raptuz, he worked for a Technicolor explosion in the Citadel of the Archives. «Music took possession of me immediately, I was still obsessed with drawing. I bring some dreamy pieces with me and I really wanted my “premiere” to take place here, in Milan, which has given me so much.”
And the exhibition is actually entitled “Miracle in Milan”.
“It is the place of dreams fulfilled, but you have to bring them home through hard work: this is where I graduated, I recorded my first album, my wonderful little daughter Anna Blue was born.”
At this point it is worth mentioning that it is 3 p.m. and when the call from Corriere comes, we are just about to go to the table at the singer’s house. “It’s a challenge to get everything fit; I took a little too long with lunch. I’ll leave the salad here: it won’t get cold anyway. In the background a dog barks and the little girl cries.
What kind of mother is Nina Zilli?
“Run, run, run. Like all of them. Luckily, because my job allows me to plan and is therefore very present. Definitely a supporter of grandparents as a world cultural heritage.”
Tate?
“Yes, one. Between one feeding and the next, I run to the testing room. You think of a singer and imagine him being followed by who knows what crowd of helpers. My reality is much more basic: I’m a freelancer and I can’t stop. Two weeks after giving birth, I stood on a stage in Rimini with the doctor’s green light, while Dani (her partner, the rapper-producer Daniele Lazzarin, aka Danti) was with Blue and handed her the bottle: We’ll change in everything. A month and a day after the birth, I was on the right track. Unlike those who say: “He won’t make it, goodbye.””
You don’t expect something like this to happen to an ultra-established singer.
“There is still a long way to go in my industry too. The salaries of female artists are 30% lower than those of male artists, yet I do a man’s job: I’m often the only woman in the group. A drummer (he also had no time left) looked at me disdainfully: She’s pretty, she sings, she doesn’t even want to play. I’ve heard everything.
But he has come a long way.
“If I hadn’t met Sara Potente, a great record producer among many record producers, right from the start, things might have turned out differently.”
Tell us about those years.
“I studied communication sciences at the Iulm in Milan. I shared the house with Ortensia Compans, who worked in the music industry, but I never let her hear my songs: I didn’t want to mix friendship and work. At that time I had a band – Chiara e glissimi – in Gossolengo, in the Piacenza area, where I was born. One day Ortensia comes into the house and finds me with a demo: What is that? You’re crazy not to put it out there.”
Has she thought about it?
“Exclamation: I have the right girl. He took the CD to Sara, who is now a big name at Sony, but at the time she had just joined Universal, she had a small office. Only we believed in it: me, Ortensia and Sara (who then gave birth to Mahmood, so to speak). With the lowest budget in history – 15,000 euros in 2009 – an EP was released, Nina Zilli. I paid for the musicians’ lunch by asking Dad for credit and telling him: Then I’ll give it back to you.
We met them all there with “50mila”.
“It went platinum. Yes, I gave Dad the money back.
Is it true that the guitarist in his first band dismissed the piece as “crap”?
“He used more explicit terms. We played in Val Trebbia, I had arranged it on the piano and it was a bit boring for the guitar. He blurted out and so did I: The band ends here. The next day I went to another room, to another valley, with other musicians to record.
And he will have eaten his hands.
“We’re still friends, Mr. Pizza and I.”
Mr. Pizza?
“His nickname. I won’t say his name, he complains, because they’re still making fun of him for this move.
Psychiatrist Paolo Crepet said that if singers take off their clothes to promote a record, they’re out of luck, “all that’s missing is an endoscopy.” Comments?
“Nudity as an end in itself leads to nothing.”
Some time ago she herself asked her colleagues to “put out beautiful music” and nothing else…
“And they said I was mad at Elodie. A hoax.”
Have you heard?
“No, but we do the same rounds and she knows I wasn’t talking about her. I was commenting on a broader trend. In the digital Middle Ages we live in, we do everything to get a click: if you don’t have talent, you’ll be lost after an hour of wild clicking. Right then, at the end of 2022, an X Factor contestant stood naked in the subway in Milan to promote a play. This is what we remember, not the rest…”
She also made explicit comments in the “Sola” video.
“I was talking about a moment of positive solitude, beyond genre. For the director, the concept was embodied in autoeroticism, I followed him. However, nothing can be seen, just scraps of skin. And it was helpful in expressing the concept of the song.”
Crepet’s words referred to shots such as Arisa looking for a husband or Victoria from Måneskin.
“Victoria’s nudity fits into the rock genre, it’s glamorous, Iggy Pop is always naked and no one is surprised.” By the way, and I say this without any concrete references, those who take off their clothes on social media are just for the sake of it to get people to talk about themselves: there are many of them, it is a free choice. I wouldn’t do it because it seems like a very tiring life.
Speaking of social media. Experiences with haters?
“Once for a like on a comment from a journalist who said that Mengoni should dedicate himself to Italian singer-songwriters, and what I understood as a positive, although in reality it was a criticism, the trolls showered me with insults after a mic Twitter.” Mistake at a concert. They’re naughty, they don’t worry me: I’ve met real bullies, in the flesh.”
At what age?
“Elementary school, middle school. I was a nerd from Gossolengo, I had a “mustache” and braces. They followed me, they insulted me, they covered me in mud literally, not figuratively. What a school of resistance.”
Then she moved to Milan.
“As a teenager I came here by train from Piacenza: I went to the Sinigaglia market, got my nose pierced in Via Torino and my mother went crazy.” I moved permanently in the early 2000s, I have studied, but it was a plan B. I’ve known plan A since I was little, when I was five years old I watched the Sanremo festival and repeated: I want to go there.”
Your university halls?
“With Ortensia in a side street of Viale Monza, initially between Porta Ticinese and Barona: today it is a beautiful place, but then still…”.
Has Milan changed?
“Aesthetically there are a lot of improvements. Of course there are also problems.”
I hope that not all the brains and young people have disappeared by now.
“Real. I know a lot of musicians who have decided to move to the hinterland.
Where are you living now?
“I was born in the countryside at the Arco della Pace and need the park.”
Security issue.
“Bombs exploded in Milan in the 1970s, let’s fix everything a little.” I’m more afraid of the tendency to increase insecurity: that can lead to bad situations.”
On social media, he condemned the violence and commented on the story of the trans woman beaten by local police.
“Perhaps this fact is also due to the climate that is created.”
Would you catch a pickpocket with your cell phone?
“NO. Rather, being the person I am, I would try to save the unfortunate person’s pocket by screaming at the top of my lungs like a madman.
October 8, 2023
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