It comes out on April 21st “I love you like a fool “, new album of unreleased songs by Mina: the first since “Mina-Fossati” in 2019 and the first alone in 5 years, from “Maeba”. Each release of the singer is also and above all a particular and often unpublished recording and industrial operation: not only for the duet with Blanco (Mina has often worked with artists apparently distant from her), but for the way in which the album is conceived and accomplished.
“Mina has been able to find a key to remain consistent with her artistic identity but also to speak to people. She does the opposite of the others, yet she manages to meet the taste of a changing public, who have never seen her on TV, much less live”, explains Massimiliano Pani: he has been her manager and her artistic producer for decades, and we asked him to explain the process that leads to an album of this kind. Starting from the decision to go back to being independent: PDU, the label founded in the late 60s to protect the singer’s freedom, released the album without the support of a major label. “Mina is the queen of indie”, smiles Pani “she manages to be both in the sector and very popular”.
Let’s start with the duet between Mina and Blanco: how did it come about?
He’s the one who sent us this piece. Mina always starts from there, from the songs: this one seemed strong to us and we went on.
This thing is beautiful: an artist born in 2003 looks for Mina because she is out of time and crosses generations. We’re talking about an artist who had her last concert in ’78 and her last TV appearance in ’76, who doesn’t promote, yet she manages to be contemporary and of interest to young artists.
Apart from Blanco, who is the most talented, we have had requests from almost everyone else.
It is not elegant to ask which artists have asked to duet with her without the thing going through…
You start from the piece and not from the business operation: in your career you have made surprising duets because you liked the proposal. This is the case: the piece is strong, he is strong. The proposal arrived in extremis, we had already closed the disc: a particular project, the first unreleased after Mina-Fossati. The song comes out both on Blanco’s record and on ours: something wanted because we both come out with a new record and it would have been a shame not to include it on both of us.
On the PDU website there is a form that allows anyone to submit a song to you. How does the choice of songs for a Mina album happen?
We get 5,000 a year, which is unique because no other artist hears them all. When we received them on CD, or even before that on tape, it was a job that my mother did slowly, every day: she took one record at a time from these big bins where we kept them, today it’s obviously easier.
But in this way we have also discovered unknown authors: we work with everyone, famous signatures but also opening the door to those who don’t do it for a living but write well. This is her way of building her discography: she focused on songs after leaving concerts and TV.
In the end a singer is his pieces.
What drives the choice? The songs or the form of the recording project?
The two roads that Mina has traveled are the unreleased records and those of covers. The idea for the project was born when she decided to tackle, for example, jazz standards, melodrama, bossanova. There you know the sphere in which you move: then you decide the arrangements, drafts and so on.
When you design an album of unreleased songs you work over time, it’s a selection that is made throughout the year, not in two weeks. A little at a time you make an initial skimming, you get to about thirty pieces and then record about 15. Then more or less 12 end up on the disc. Some are then fished out for subsequent projects: but in this case they are the songs that dictate the project.
This is also the first album in a long time where Mina and PDU are not supported by a major label, but do everything independently. Why this choice?
Everything has changed: in 2022 we launched a dedicated e-commerce, making a collector’s product with attention to audio quality, for an audience of audiophiles and for Mina’s audience. Since this is an unreleased disc, we also distribute it traditionally, through Discotheque Laziale – which today is the last independent distributor and which already works with Universal and Warner. The disc is not on Amazon because it forces you to have a price that is not consistent with the quality product we want.
In the case of Francesco Guccini’s latest album, it was decided to opt only for the physical format, without streaming. Have you considered this option?
The album comes out digitally on platforms, distributed by Pirames International with which PDU has signed an agreement: with them we will try to work on Mina’s catalog abroad as well.
We will still make vinyl-only publications, but they will be more niche things: being a beautiful, unreleased record that we care about, it didn’t seem right to limit it to audiophiles or vinyl enthusiasts.
The PDU was born more than 50 years ago, in ’67: an independent record company, to protect Mina. Was Mina indie before the others?
Mina is Mina not because she sings well, but because she has an “ahead” mind: she understood that to defend her artistic identity she had to have her own label and recording studio, to complete the projects she wanted. A record company wants you to do the same thing over and over again when you’re successful. An artist wants to have her autonomy: she was the forerunner. From a certain point on, artists who broke free from contracts started their own label, to make the projects they wanted. It was definitely one of the things she understood before the others,
During that time he chose not to have an image anymore, at least not directly.
He understood that TV was changing, it was much less live and less and less a dramaturgically theatrical show. So she focused on discography. She decided to play with her image of her: in that period her face was everywhere, and she began to destroy it, creating another Mina, out of time, ageless. All this 20 or 30 years before Madonna and Lady Gaga
His last appearance was in 2001: it was a video shot for a brand, Wind.
But it wasn’t TV: it was put on the web and there was the idea of a multicast operation, with content that wasn’t a show, but a fiction, bringing people into the studio and showing our way of working.
In Sanremo, a few years ago, Mina appeared in the form of an avatar, again for a telephone company. How do you choose partnerships with brands?
In that case they liked the idea of singing a DJ piece, that of Parov Stelar. It was interesting that a telephone company, which was targeting boys, chose Mina and not having them play Mina, but a contemporary song. These are the things that stimulate and amuse her: it was a winning idea because Mina acted as the glue between parents and children.
Another area where Mina is very present are synchronizations, especially in foreign TV series and films: “The White Lotus”, “Master of None”, “Daisy Jones & The Six”, “Spiderman”, “Luca”…
There is also a song in Almodovar’s next film, he always puts one of Mina in his films. The requests arrive from abroad, without doing anything to solicit them, in particular from the Latin nations and from a certain world of the United States: Mina is a symbolic name of Italian spirit.
It is also present in Italian series: “Le fate ignoranti” by Ozpetek for Disney+ or “Bang Bang Baby” by Prime Video. Have the requests for your songs increased?
In general, series have increased the amount of music required, because productions have increased: there are requests for songs that give a chronological setting, or those where you need a song to highlight a moment. We have no one to solicit requests: they come by themselves.
Last year PDU launched a project for collectors: vinyls and tapes on one side and unpublished works in NFT on the other. Is it possible to make an initial assessment?
It was necessary to do this: the idea was to put all of Mina’s discography in one place, even virtual, and to be able to produce the new products in high quality. The NFT is the frontier of collecting, it is the real product that allows you to experiment. She had an initial financial bubble, but she will again interest collectors for her visual art and music aspect. The project goes on: we’ve had a good response from Mina’s fans, who have found a meeting place.
Are you thinking of expanding these PDU experiences by working with other artists?
We worked with Ivano Fossati, who wanted his records to be available on quality vinyl. We will also open a small rib of the PDU for new productions: jazz records, but also new and young pop artists; receiving so much material we have found some talents we believe in and would like to help.