Lenny of Una finestra di fronte has tagged me with a meme pertaining the five most beautiful songs. There is no food in this post, only music, which is another one of my passions, so I welcome the opportunity to write about it. I interpreted the specification “most beautiful” as meaning “for me,” so this is a rather opinionated post. This is fun for me, but it is going to be difficult to make it meaningful for my non-Italian readers, since three of my choices are Italian songs from some years ago. Looking at the lyrics made me realize how words and music work in them and how difficult it would be to make them justice in translation. In any case, for each song, I found a video on YouTube, in case you’d like to listen to it and, for the Italian artists, I found a wikipedia entry.

1. I will start with my favorite Italian song, La donna cannone from cantautore (singer and song-writer) Francesco De Gregori (English translation of the lyrics). Listening to it always makes my eyes sparkle with delight.
2. Then there is Io vorrei… non vorrei… ma se vuoi by Lucio Battisti. It is another intense song that kept me company during my teenage years: I wrote its lyrics on my school diary year after year.
3. The last Italian entry is Amore bello by Claudio Baglioni. Pretty much all his songs are great, and a number of them are connected to specific moments or people of my life. (In this case the video’s quality is poor, but the concert is recent and it was held in the US.)
4. The first English song in my personal hit parade is Every Breath You Take by The Police. Still a great song to listen to, still fresh. 
5. The first time I visited my husband in California, we took a car trip to Lake Tahoe and then Alpine County. On the road, we listened to a collection of songs by George Gershwin. My favorite was, and remains, They Can’t Take That Away From Me.

I have decided not to tag anybody in particular with this meme, but to invite anybody who feels inspired to answer it: believe me, it is fun!

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post: 

cinque canzoni

or launch the  cinque canzoni  audio file [mp3].

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