Inside Donatella Rettore’s 1983 Country Concept Album 'Far West'

How the Italian singer paid homage to country music, musical theater, and spaghetti western through the electronic Italo disco sounds.

2024 appears to be the year where Americana and country fully transitioned from being corny to being mainstream cool: think of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter and Lana del Rey’s Lasso. Hell, even Ari Aster is directing a contemporary Western, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, and Emma Stone.

Country music did, somehow, penetrate the Italian music industry and that should not surprise us, given Italy’s robust Spaghetti Western tradition. In 1983, Donatella Rettore decided to write a country-infused concept album, aptly titled Far West,  way before Madonna’s Music from 2000 and Lady Gaga’s Joanne from 2016, both completely developed along the country western aesthetics, themes and sound.  “I wrote Far West because I was inspired to create a piece of musical theater,” Rettore tells Italian Disco Stories in an exclusive interview. “I wanted to write a musical that was reminiscent of older Spaghetti Western movies, and wanted to write a rock musical that had an underlying common thread, with …