Music Vacancy.

Just look at how he gazes into the camera!

Album: Lei, gli amici e tutto il resto
Artist: Nek

Summed up in one word: Huh?
Would I recommend to others: Sure why not.
Animal it reminded me of: Chilled out Doberman wearing sunglasses while relaxing in the sun.
Situation this album definitely ISN’T suited for: The Boston Tea Party of 1773

I began my musical exploration with an album I could barely understand. Despite years of primary school, high school and one semester at uni studying Italian, my grasp of almost everything this man said was next to nothing.

While reminding me of my complete failure to become fluent at another language by the age of 21, I assumed Nek was also singing words which delve right into the hearts of women everywhere. He was probably showing he has those feelings and emotions all girls dream of. Maybe he’s the Italian equivalent of Peter “Mysterious Girl I want to get close to you” Andre or some one man version of the Backstreet Boys.

One would assume that the fact his name is a misspelling of both a key part of both the human body and a guitar would completely take away any hope of sexual appeal. Apparently not.

To be serious though, I did enjoy his music despite not understanding much. “Laura non c’è” definitely got stuck in my head. Understanding what “Laura non c’è” meant might have helped (well, I translated it to Laura’s not here, which I think was right). I did find an English version but then doubted it was a direct translation (I felt like a conspiracy theorist making wild accusations).

There was also the song “Sei Grande” (while the two songs mentioned are the first two songs on the album I promise I listened to more than that). “Sei grande” in my mind translated to “you’re big/large”. Surely only a foreign language could turn something like that into a romantic statement. It could probably mean “you’re great” according to the Italian dictionary but that’s just no fun.

In “Dimmi Cos’è”, I could have sworn he did a slight Michael Jackson styled “ow!”. It was a good song though! “Di Più” sounded like a country song in the instrumental intro but luckily (or unluckily?) went back into Italian pop mode as soon as Nek started singing. It did end with harmonicas though, confusing but awesome. Who doesn’t love harmonicas?

To be honest, most of the upbeat songs which I enjoyed seemed to be at the start of the album. I’m not a huge fan of many slow songs it seems (there are exceptions… Maybe it’s harder to make a unique slow song which doesn’t sound like the rest?).

I did learn what it must be for people overseas listening to English music while barely understanding it. Much of the time the songs stuck in my head either had gibberish words replacing the words I didn’t know, or I started making up English sentences about anything to fill the gap. Fun fun.

Thanks to both Amy and Antonio for suggesting Nek! If you have an album you’d like to suggest, let me know!