Parigi

Paolo Conte brings jazz and swing to a South American tango in Parigi, that song that sounds like Paris but beats with the rhythm of Turin. Recorded in two different studios — Format in Torino, where Happy Ruggiero played the *eminent* in the most playful passages, and the RCA studios in Rome — the piece clocks in at 3:11 but leaves a footprint longer than a stroll along the boulevards. It’s not just a song about a city: it’s a crossroads of climates, where Conte’s piano blends with arrangements that seem plucked from a Parisian milonga, as if the Seine and the Po had agreed to meet on a staff.

The album Paris milonga, released in May 1981 by RCA Italiana, marks Conte’s return to the Format studio after the hiatus of Un gelato al limon (1979), where he had worked with Nanni Ricordi. Here he reunites with Lilli Greco, his producer from his early days, and recovers that sound that had already peeked through in his earlier recordings: jazz and swing, now with a South American twist that lends it an air of elegant nostalgia. The song itself isn’t an epic piece, but in those three minutes and eleven seconds it achieves something rare: making a city sound like a character, with its lights, its shadows, and that hint of Italian accent Conte never abandoned, not even when French opened its doors to him.