What were the topics most clicked on by readers in 2023 on milano.corriere.it? We are republishing some of the Milanese and Lombardy articles that have sparked the most debates, comments and shares in the digital community. Enjoy the reading!
(Article published on October 8, 2023)
«We learned that she is pregnant. We could do without her, thank you.”
Did they really say that?
«There was an email exchange whose meaning was: clearly the lady won’t be able to keep her commitment and we’re looking for someone else. But they had done everything themselves. I was stunned. I was there and thought: let’s start well.”
A quick line about the salary given the news of the pregnancy. “We tell each other a lot of things: we’re ahead, everything has changed.” And instead you see the blank resignation (sui generis but that’s it) even if your name is Nina Zilli and you are a singer with millions of streams. She calls it “my first reality check on motherhood.” Which would then be “the blow”.
Some details.
«January 2023, I was expecting Anna Blue (who would have been born in Milan on June 2nd, ed.). On Viva Rai 2 Fiorello and Fabrizio Biggio let it slip away that I’m pregnant. Almost no one knew and I was disappointed because I would have liked to break the news, luckily at least I had announced it to my parents. Oh well, she passed. I didn’t expect what happened next.”
The “after” is the cancellation of a contract that reaches Nina Zilli – pseudonym of Maria Chiara Fraschetta, born in 1980, born in Piacenza and Milanese by adoption – between head and neck.
Who wrote them?
«In the days of the Fiorello and Biggio “spoiler” I was negotiating participation in a private event. The organizers contacted my staff explaining that they had heard the news and were asking when the pregnancy was due. Seriously, he was told. They were just beating around the bush a little bit because right away came the: no, thanks. I was pregnant and this evidently made me unreliable in their eyes. If she has to give birth she won’t be ready, let’s change horses. How kind, how thoughtful: rest. They withdrew the proposal without even knowing if I really feared not making it.”
His reaction?
«Thank goodness the management was there to act as a filter. I was in my fourth month and they took my job away because I was pregnant as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Isn’t it the year 2023? The canceled event was scheduled almost a month after giving birth, two weeks after Blue’s birth – with medical consent, I’m not unconscious – I was on a stage in Rimini. Ready or not ready, gentlemen, I should have said it: or not?
She may have lost a contract, yet she has made up for it abundantly. For the record: with the baby bump she also shot a video of her latest success (“Innamorata”) and in October she was the protagonist of her first show. Together with your colleagues-friends Alvin and Raptuz you worked at the Citadel of Archives. «Music took possession of me immediately, I was still obsessed with drawing. I bring somewhat dreamlike pieces and I absolutely wanted my “premiere” to be here, in the Milan that has given me so much.”
And in fact the exhibition was entitled «Miracle in Milan».
«It is the place of fulfilled dreams, which however you have to bring home by working hard: here I graduated, I recorded my first album, my wonderful little girl Anna Blue was born».
At this point it is worth noting that it is 3pm and, when the call from the Corriere arrives, we are about to go to the table at the singer’s house. «Making everything fit is a challenge, I went a bit long with lunch. Here I am, leaving the salad: it won’t get cold anyway.” In the background, a dog barking and the little girl’s cries.
What kind of mother is Nina Zilli?
«Run, run, run. Like all of them. Lucky because with my job I can plan and therefore be very present. In any case, promoter of grandparents as a world heritage site.”
Tate?
«Yes, one. I run to the testing room between one feeding and another. You think of a singer and imagine him 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, with the doctor’s green light, I was on a stage in Rimini while Dani (his partner, the rapper-producer Daniele Lazzarin, aka Danti) was with Blue giving her the bottle: we alternate in everything. A month and a day after giving birth I was on track. In defiance of those who: “He won’t make it, goodbye”».
You don’t expect something like this to happen to an ultra-established singer.
«Even in my sector there is a long way to go. The salaries of female artists are 30% lower than male artists, yet I do a male job: I am often the only woman in the group. A percussionist (she was also out of time) looked at me with disdain: she’s pretty, she sings, she doesn’t even want to play. I’ve heard it all.”
But he’s come a long way.
«If I hadn’t met Sara Potente at the beginning, a great record producer among many record producers, perhaps things would have gone differently».
Tell us about those years.
«I was studying communication sciences at Iulm in Milan. I shared the house with Ortensia Compans, who worked in music but I had never, ever let her listen to my songs: I didn’t want to mix friendship and work. At the 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 it? You’re crazy not to put it out there.”
Did she think about it?
«Exclaim: I have the right girl. She brought the disc to Sara who today is an important name at Sony but at the time she had just joined Universal: she had a small office. Only us believed in it: me, Ortensia and Sara (who then, so to speak, produced Mahmood). With the lowest budget in history – 15 thousand euros, it was 2009 – an EP was released, Nina Zilli. I paid for the musicians’ lunch by asking dad for loans and telling him: then I’ll give it back to you.”
There we all met her with «50mila».
«It went platinum. Yes, I gave dad the money back.”
Is it true that the guitarist of his first band dismissed the piece as “crap”?
«He used more explicit terms. We were playing in Val Trebbia, I had arranged it on the piano and there was a bit of a boring ride for the guitar. He blurted out and so did I: the band ends here. The next day I went to record in another room, in another valley, with other musicians.”
And he will have eaten his hands.
«We are still friends, Mr. Pizza and I».
Mr Pizza?
“His nickname. I don’t say what his name is, he complains because they still make fun of him for that move.”
Psychiatrist Paolo Crepet said that if singers undress to promote a record they’re out of luck, “all that’s missing is an endoscopy.” Comments?
«Nakedness as an end in itself leads to nothing».
Some time ago she herself urged 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 go on the same rounds and she knows I wasn’t talking about her. I was commenting on a broader trend. In the digital Middle Ages in which we live, we do everything to get a click: if you don’t have talent, after the hour of wild clicking you’re missing. Precisely in those days, at the end of 2022, an X Factor contestant stood naked on the subway in Milan to promote a piece. We remember this, not the rest…”.
She was also explicit in the video «Sola».
«I was talking about a moment of positive solitude, beyond genres. For the director the concept was embodied in autoeroticism, I followed him. However, you can’t see anything, just pieces of skin. And it was functional in expressing the concept of the song.”
Crepet’s words were referred to shots like those of Arisa looking for a husband, or Victoria of Måneskin.
«Victoria’s nudity fits into the rock genre, it’s glam, Iggy Pop is always naked and no one is surprised. For the rest, and I say this without specific references, there are those who undress on social media just to get people talking about themselves: there are many of them, it’s a free choice. I wouldn’t do it because it seems like a very tiring life to me.”
Speaking of social media. Experiences with haters?
«Once for a like on a comment by a journalist who said that Mengoni should dedicate himself to Italian singer-songwriters, and which I had understood as positive while in reality it was a criticism, the trolls filled me with insults on Twitter after a micro error at a concert. They’re naughty, they don’t worry me: I’ve met real bullies, in the flesh.”
At what age?
«Elementary, middle school. I was a nerd from Gossolengo, I had a “mustache”, braces for my teeth. They followed me, they insulted me, they covered me in mud in a literal sense, not a metaphorical one. What a school of resistance.”
Then she moved to Milan.
«I came here from Piacenza by train as a teenager: I went to the Sinigaglia market, I pierced my nose in Via Torino and my mother went crazy. I moved permanently in the early 2000s, I was studying but it was a plan B. I’ve known plan A since I was little, at 5 years old I watched the Sanremo Festival and repeated: I want to go there.”
Your university homes?
«With Ortensia in a side street of Viale Monza, first between Porta Ticinese and Barona: today it’s a nice place but then anyway…».
Has Milan changed?
«Aesthetically there are many improvements. Of course, also problems.”
Prices, for example.
«I could have been among the kids in tents asking for more affordable rent. Milan is expensive because it is the city of opportunities, so much demand and little supply impact the market. I believe in courses and recourses like Giambattista Vico: the atmosphere will change.”
Hoping that in the meantime the brains and young people have not all gone away.
“Real. I know many musicians who have chosen to move to the hinterland.”
Where do you live now?
«At the Arco della Pace, I was born in the greenery and I need the park».
Security theme.
«In the Seventies bombs exploded in Milan, let’s repair everything a bit. I rather fear the tendency to amplify insecurity: it can cause bad situations.”
On social media he condemned the violence by commenting on the story of the trans beaten by local police officers.
«That fact too, perhaps, is the result of the climate that is created».
Would you catch a pickpocket with your cell phone?
“No. Rather, as I am, I would try to save the unfortunate person’s bag by screaming at the top of my lungs like a crazy person.”
January 1, 2024
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2024-01-01 15:38:12
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