Il cucciolo Alfredo

There are songs that start as a game and end up telling a story no one expected. Il cucciolo Alfredo is one of those: a five-minute and seventeen-second track that plays daily on Italian radios, yet is actually a musical portrait where Lucio Dalla's voice stretches, cracks, and plays with silences as if they were notes. The lyrics don't follow a linear order; they move forward and backward like a train unsure whether it's heading to Rome or Carimate, leaving clues along the way about a dog named Alfredo, a local singer, and even a nod to the Krisma. It's not a song you memorize: it's one you feel, with that blend of tenderness and boldness that only Dalla could pack into less than six minutes.

The album where it was born, Come è profondo il mare, was released in 1977 and marked a turning point in his career: for the first time, he wrote both the lyrics and melodies himself, without relying on other authors. It was recorded between Rome —at the RCA studios, with engineer Maurizio Montanesi— and Carimate, at the Stone Castle Studios, where Ezio De Rosa captured the raw sound of his saxophones and clarinets. But the most curious thing is that, although the album is considered a milestone of canzone italiana, Dalla wasn't aiming for a classic sound: he wanted each track to breathe, for words and instruments to chase each other without haste. And in Il cucciolo Alfredo, that boldness is evident in every verse, where Dalla's voice becomes almost theatrical, as if the dog in the title were another character in his repertoire.