'Tra le granite e le granate' is the second single from Francesco Gabbani's album 'Magellano' which topped the Italian Album charts on its 1st week of release. The album's named after the Portuguese navigator/explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who led the first European voyage of discovery to circumnavigate the globe - the 1st European ever to cross from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean before reaching the then-called South Sea.
The concept of travel and journey is the underlying theme of the whole album, which Gabbani says is the embodiment of those who have the courage to venture into the unknown. "Not every song in the album is about travelling, but they all have some points of view that may represent the different stages of a journey to explore the reality around us and, above all, a journey of self-discovery. As for the sound, I like to describe it as a 'Gabbani's fritto misto' (a typical Italian mixture of fried sea-food) whose ingredients are brought by the collaborations with musician/producer Luca Chiaravalli, my brother Filippo and songwriter Fabio Ilaqua."
'Tra le granite e le granate' (Between granitas and grenades) was actually released before Gabbani's performance on the ESC finale, and is gradually reaching heights comparable to 'Occidentali’s karma', hitting almost 8 million views on YouTube on the first two weeks. As with 'Occidentali’s karma', the new hit includes deep reflection behind fun, catchy music, whistling refrains and light-hearted atmosphere - Gabbani's strong suit - rich in metaphors, double entendres and hidden messages that can easily get lost in translation*.
Francesco explains it like this: "The song refers to the stereotypes of those who force themselves to have fun, between sunscreens and water games, while outside of the beaches the same black and white old life goes on. It’s the holiday, the surrogate of a real journey, a short break of slowness and peace, which only functions to make the long winter at least bearable. The contemporary slave stretches out into the sun, sprinkles his white and flabby skin with sunscreen, and wants to forget just for a moment the world outside. It’s our human condition." ~by wiwibloggs & esctoday
* Granita (technically the plural is granite in Italian) is a semi-frozen dessert, a sort of rough sorbet, grainy, slushy and indispensible in Italy's high summer.
* 'Abandon all hope ye who enters here' is a famous quote from Dante's 'Inferno' ('Divine Comedy'), the last verse engraved on the Gates of Hell.
* E-state is used as a homophone pun - it means 'And stay'/'So, stay', but it's pronounced the same as 'Estate' which means 'Summer'.
* 'The wind blows and the storm howls' is a quote from a song of the Italian Resistance during World War II.
* 'Healthy mind in a run-down body' is the antithesis of the famous Latin phrase 'Mens sana in corpore sano' (healthy mind in a healthy body) used by the Roman poet Juvenal on the hierarchy of needs: physical and mental health.
