Songs for Uranian-Ligurian sea monsters' mating

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When the last scene from Pixar’s Luca was coming to an end, I tearily told my friends its only mistake — Disney’s censorship aside — was not including Mina on its soundtrack. It seemed fit for its subtext of a teenage romance set in the 60s dolce vita Italian seaside. I was proved wrong delightfully when the credits rolled to Mina’s Città Vuota, and the tears ran down my face.

Much like Alberto and Luca’s relationship, it’s a song about the longing for a lover who moved away from us. Even for the least educated in semiotics, choosing that particular track to finish the film is a message hard to miss. Later, it came out that Luca was intended as a LGBTQ+ story, cementing it as one of my favourite animations, no apologies needed this time.

Anyhow, due to its ending, the film has become forever intertwined with Mina for me. It didn’t help that I wrote a Luca fanfiction based on some of her songs. Thinking about one meant I’d think about the other. Luca and Alberto are the de facto headcanon characters of any of Mina’s love songs for me. And I’ve been thinking a lot about those fishy Italian queer sweethearts.

For instance, I had them in mind yesterday when I lay in bed and put on some songs by Mina to help me sleep. I ended up however finding out she’d just released a new album in November. I was in an awe when I finished it. She is an 85-year-old singer who has never stopped experimenting, blessing the world with fierce, wide-ranged vocals that are still rock solid.

With a career spanning nearly seven decades, Mina was never shy to try: she could sing the rockabilly with just as ease as she would praise Holy Mary in sacred hymns. She moved smoothly from the most hopeless romantic ballads to the coolest of the bossa nova acts, and was just as successful with disco music, electropop, hard rock, jazz, or really anything else.

If you are curious, I listed below some of my favourite songs by her. I recommend you listen to them in a random order. Here they are:

  1. Nessuno
  2. Il Cielo in una Stanza
  3. Città Vuota
  4. Se Telefonando
  5. E Se Domani
  6. Insieme
  7. Io e Te da Soli
  8. Fiori Rosa, Fiori di Pesco
  9. Nessun Dolore
  10. Ave Maria
  11. Con Te Sarà Diverso
  12. Oggi Sono Io
  13. Amami Amami
  14. Buttalo Via

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We feel the long pulsation, ebb and flow of endless motion, the tones of unseen mystery, the vague and vast suggestions of the briny world, the liquid-flowing syllables, the perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy rhythm, the boundless vista and the horizon far and dim are all here, and this is ocean’s poem.

— Walt Whitman.