The comments under the YouTube video of this performance exemplify the gulf between then and now: one commenter writes, “Quante belle speranze per la nostra Italia ed Europa, e invece….ci stiamo sgretolando…” (“How many beautiful hopes for our Italy and Europe, and instead … we are crumbling …”) Another simply writes, “Italy has National debt in billion euros: 2,431.08.” In one performance of “Insieme” from 1992, Toto performs the song in front of an audience of attractive teenagers who wave flashlights in time to the music, and stand up and cheer at the climax of the song. (Delors, former president of the European Commission, spearheaded the European single market.)įrom today’s vantage point – after years of financial crises, Euroscepticism, and the reascension of the nationalist right in many parts of Europe – watching someone wax so unironically poetic about the European Union is disarming, if not downright comical. It might also be that Norway is cursed.) In his live commentary for the UK, Sir Terry Wogan quipped, “This is more of a Jacques Delors competition than I’ve imagined,” as a cartoon mascot called Eurocat knocks down a cartoon wall. Italy wasn’t the only country to send a topical entry that year: Austria’s “Keine Mauern Mehr” proclaimed “No Walls Anymore” in German, English, and Serbo-Croatian, and Ketil Stokkan of Norway finished dead last with the song “Brandenburger Tor.” (Why did Norway fail where Italy succeeded, even though the songs were so thematically similar? It might be, as Chris Zammarelli suggests, that “Brandenburger Tor” is about the recent past, while “Insieme” looks to the future. And then, in English, the tagline: Unite, unite, Europe!Ĭlearly, in 1990, a kind of pan-European optimism was in the air. We are united under the same flag, the same ideals. Insieme’s lyrics are almost propaganda-like in their devotion. It was a surprise winner at Eurovision 1990, beating out predicted favorites like Ireland’s “Somewhere in Europe” and the UK’s “Give a Little Love Back to the World.” (After the 2020 podcast investigating the rumors, Scorpions frontman Klaus Meine publicly denied the claim.) And just like “Wind of Change,” “Insieme” is undeniably effective.
Musically and lyrically, “Insieme” reminds me of another 1990 song about the end of the Cold War, “ Wind of Change” by The Scorpions, which was so effective in its message of European unity and reconciliation that it became the subject of persistent rumors that it was written by the C.I.A. He jabs his pointer finger at the audience like an infomercial salesman when he sings “per voi” – for you – and clasps his hands together to drive home the meaning of the word “insieme”: together. Cutugno, a hirsute middle-aged fellow with a prominent brow, delivers the song with an almost grave intensity. In typical power ballad fashion, it starts subdued and sparse and builds to a triumphant finish of power chords. It's true, it will remind us that we are, after all, not God.“Insieme” is a soaring paean to a politically and ideologically united Europe. And your father's name will shine again like a beacon in the galaxy. Then, having reached the heights, this all-but-divine race perished in a single night, and nothing was preserved above ground.Īlta, about a million years from now the human race will have crawled up to where the Krell stood in their great moment of triumph and tragedy. Ethically and technologically they were a million years ahead of humankind, for in unlocking the mysteries of nature they had conquered even their baser selves, and when in the course of eons they had abolished sickness and insanity, crime and all injustice, they turned, still in high benevolence, upwards towards space.
In times long past, this planet was the home of a mighty, noble race of beings who called themselves the Krell. United Planets Cruiser C57D, now more than a year out from Earth Base on a special mission to the planetary system of the great main-sequence star Altair. And so, at last, mankind began the conquest and colonization of deep space.
Almost at once there followed the discovery of hyperdrive through which the speed of light was first obtained and later greatly surpassed. By 2200 A.D., they had reached the other planets of our solar system. In the final decade of the 21st Century, men and women in rocket ships landed on the moon.
0 kommentar(er)
