Laura Pausini: «I would love to collaborate with C. Tangana»

Hours before Laura Pausini went to have fun at 'El Hormiguero' last Thursday, she took an open-top bus in the center of Madrid, filled it with fans, journalists, and journalist fans, and while touring the city - so to speak, because they circled Warner's offices in Príncipe Pío three times - she premiered 'Chao', her new single, a song co-written with Sam Smith and Fraser T. Smith, which was added this Friday to her latest album, 'Parallel Souls', in a new edition that includes four more tracks.

Curiously, the songs on the album have been rearranged and the record now opens with this energetic composition that Laura is already promoting with a music video in which she sports blonde hair for the first time. «The song talks about change and many times when we experience one in our life, we cut our hair or change its color and I wanted there to be that visual detail,» she explained as soon as the bus started. The Italian also wears a white dress with wings that reference another theme addressed by the piece: freedom. «It's that moment when you realize you can let go of the person who no longer thinks like you or with whom you've stopped having things in common. It's not an angry goodbye, but a 'chao'. I'll see you on the street, I'll smile at you, which is like wishing you luck in your own life, even though we're not going to be together anymore,» says the singer, who has always preferred clean breaks without looking back. «It happened to me for the first time with a friend who lived in Milan and whom I forced to come to Rome to work with me. After a while, I saw that she was suffering and that I no longer had her trust. I thought it was going to be a definitive break, but it wasn't and it's something I've learned about my character.»

The artist describes the song as «unexpected» because when she sings songs with a «deeper» meaning she usually dresses them up as a ballad or angry pop-rock. «I really like the difference here between the meaning and the light air of this song with club and pop club vibes,» she points out about 'Chao', a rare bird in her repertoire, with hardly any danceable songs. A «super-admirer» of Rafaella Carra, she has even allowed herself to invent a small arm and hand movement that she taught on Thursday to the dozens of followers who were waiting for her and who had already learned the chorus of the song by the time she sang it at the end of the ride. And she has even dared to use falsetto, a style with which she has sometimes felt «uncomfortable» because she is from a generation where it seemed you were only a good singer if you did it with full voice. «My stubborn mind sometimes stays in the nineties,» she adds with laughter.

In this sense, she maintains that all collaborations are beneficial, even when they don't work out because they lead her to face challenges and try new things. And she already hints that from Spain she likes C. Tangana very much. «I love how he writes, although he is very different from me, and I would love to collaborate with him. I also like Rosalía, obviously. And I say obviously because who wouldn't like someone with such talent,» she concludes. In recent years she says she has also learned that it is very important to open your mind and listen to artists' entire albums and not just the songs that play on the radio because it's necessary to discover why people listen to them so much. Thus, she believes that artists should use music «to talk about who they are because in the end it's the fans who choose us. If they choose us faithfully over time, they won't just be fans of your songs but of who you are. That's why explaining yourself is paramount and you have to do it very honestly. It's very important to show yourself as you are without fear.»

«It's a beautiful moment in my life and I want it to be reflected in my music,» says the artist, who does not hide the bad streak she went through during the pandemic that paralyzed the planet. «I feel super calm and happy now, but during COVID-19 I wasn't like this because while I was receiving awards - I won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar - my friends were losing their relatives... I came to think that I had already sung everything and felt I had to stop,» she explains. «It was them -she says pointing to her fans- who gave me the strength to make 'Parallel Souls'.» Before sitting down in the studio, she listened to all kinds of music: jazz, rap, trap, pop, rock... From established musicians and complete unknowns. «I made many demos to fall back in love with music and my voice,» she confesses. And when she started touring again and reconnected with her fans everything changed. «On stage I'm not afraid; I'm afraid when I get off it,» she says.

Laura had one fear. She had just turned fifty and in the industry in the nineties «we were always encouraged as singers to do everything young because they told us after that you wouldn't sell anything anymore. And I believed it.» However, she assures this is the tour where more people have come to her concerts than ever before. The artist is preparing more concerts for November and December with dates in Malaga (December 5) and Pamplona (December 7), a city she will visit for the first time. Cheerful and very friendly, she says she's not always in a good mood but feels «free» in Spain and freedom «is synonymous with joy and happiness,» she concludes.

I don't write thinking about gender or taste preferences, I write for people who love, argue, fight, and for me it's simply an unforgettable collaboration because I admire him musically very much and go beyond his way of loving because in the end I feel like him too. I'm also in love. I don't like that years go by and we still have to give categories although unfortunately we have to give them for rights reasons. The fact that he fights so hard pleases me and I've been into this forever. I'm Italian and it's not easy talking freely with the church now because Pope Francis is trying but when Marco left everyone thought I was a nun when later on my second album at 19 years old videos where men women kissed each other in Italy was scandalous I didn't understand we all kiss people we like. I love that new generations grow up without prejudice my daughter is eleven years old sees neither color nor gender nor religion.sam shows what he is always it's very important showing ourselves as we are without fear.