Sunday, June 29, 2025

Adriano Celentano: Prisencolinensinainciusol

Yes, it's the song from the Birrificio Angelo Poretti cinema commercial, and I notice that EasyJet have started to use if on their online advertising too.

It sounds great, but if you try listening to the words you find they're gibberish. What's going on?

An old New Yorker article describes Celentano (who is still with us at the age of 87) as "a sort of Italian Jim Carrey, a comic actor with a knack for the physical and goofy". 

He is also a singer, and  Prisencolinensinainciusol was intended to convey how the American English of the rock music he loved sounded to people whose first language isn't English. He also claimed a deeper purpose for it as a song about the importance of communication

Novelty records tend not to last, but what has kept this one alive is its music.

As a National Public Radio article explains, Celentano improvised the lyrics over a looped beat:

The song has been characterized as everything from Euro-pop, funk, house and even the world's first rap song — none of which were Celentano's intention.

"From what I know, 10 years later, rap music exploded in the States," he says. "I sang it with an angry tone because the theme was important. It was an anger born out of resignation. I brought to light the fact that people don't communicate."

But is that really what American English sounds like?

"Yes," he says. "Exactly like that."

Also on the record is Rafaella Carra, who in 1978 had an early Europop hit in Britain with Do It, Do It Again.

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