Cristiano Malgioglio's Poetics of Desire

How The Italian Lyricist Made Heightened Emotions Universal

Yearning is one of the key behaviors outlined by trend-forecasting agency WGSN this past spring. “Yearning is a subset of authenticity––a specific type of authenticity that comes from wanting. It’s the thing that we turn to after too easily “having” causes us to lose our way. Yearning isn’t like wellness [...] because it often feels like unwellness, but then it also feels like healing,” wrote Daisy Alioto in Dirt last year. 

And in Italian music, nobody did yearning like Cristiano Malgioglio.

A lyricist, a musician and a singer, Cristiano Malgioglio was unparalleled when it came to penning lyrics detailing both physical and mental desire. His writing style was uninhibited and quintessentially modern in the 1970s, and was beloved by female performers and queer, male performers alike. Some deem his lyrics “camp” or even “trash” (in Italian pop culture, trash denotes a type of camp that falls short of its intentions)  but they are unique in the way they speak about yearning and longing. In…