| Ritorno al Futuro/Back to the Future | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Elisa |
| Cover: | Cover of Ritorno al futuro Back to the future studio album by italian singer Elisa Toffoli 2022.jpg |
| Recorded: | 2021, Fiumicello Villa Vicentina (Italia) |
| Genre: | Pop |
| Prev Title: | Diari aperti |
| Prev Year: | 2018 |
| Year: | 2022 |
| Next Title: | Back to the Future Live |
| Next Year: | 2022 |
Ritorno al Futuro/Back to the Future is the eleventh studio album by Italian singer Elisa, released on February 18, 2022, by Universal Music Italia.
The album, which is a double record with songs in Italian in the first and in English in the second, featured the single O forse sei tu, presented by the singer during the Sanremo Music Festival 2022, where it took second place in the final ranking and was recognized with the "Giancarlo Bigazzi" award for best musical composition.[1]
The album became Elisa's fifth number one album on the Italian Albums Chart, and it received positive reviews by italian critics, plaicing among the best Italian albums of 2022.
Ritorno al futuro/Back to the Future is a double album featuring songs in Italian in the first disc and other in English in the second one.[2] The recording project features a total of twenty-five songs written and composed by Elisa with numerous songwriters and composers, including Davide Petrella, Dardust, Calcutta, Takagi & Ketra, Franco126 and Stevie Aiello. For the production of the songs there is the participation of Sixpm, Dardust, Zef, Mace, Shablo, Don Joe and Venerus. There are also three collaborations with Rkomi, Jovanotti and an all-female song with Elodie, Giorgia and Roshelle.[3] The process of writing and composing the songs saw the artist interface with new ways, writing lyrics directly on a beat.[4] [5] Elisa talked about her choice of album title in an interview with Sky TG24:[6]
In February 2022, it was announced that Elisa would serve as artistic director of the Heroes Festival in Verona.[7] The festival was held as a "green-village" to raise awareness of environmental issues and in favor of sustainable development. The festival continued on May 28, 30 and 31, 2022, when Elisa performed three concert-events at the Arena di Verona.[8]
From June 28 to September 24, 2022, Elisa performed thirty concerts on the Back to the Future Live Tour,[9] a tour promoting the album with a low environmental impact, as told by the artist:[10] From October 2 to November 5, 2022, the singer promoted an eight-date European tour, including in Brussels, Munich, Barcelona, and London. Between December and January 2023, the singer embarked on An Intimate Night, a tour that took place exclusively in theaters and featured Dardust as artistic collaborator and musician.
Claudio Cabona of Rockol found that "Elisa has always been an experimenter, even in the past she opened her music to other influences and contaminations, but always linked to a world that in some way showed traits similar to her own," but that the project probably stemmed from "a concrete response to the isolation generated by the pandemic and which in fact sanction an attack on all forms of narcissism. It is no coincidence that the common thread of the record is the idea of reacting to these uncertain and ruthless times." Cabona found that Ritorno al futuro/Back to the Future represents "a sonic mosaic; [...] in which there is the Elisa of always, but also the one that no one would have ever expected."[11] Giulia Ciavarelli for TV Sorrisi e Canzoni reported that in Ritorno al futuro/Back to the Future "Elisa experiments, opens herself up to new contaminations, and hosts in the tracklist many artists from the Italian scene in the composition of music, production, and lyrics".[12]
Giorgia Dughetti of All Music Italia wrote that the album "fits perfectly into its time, both in terms of themes and sonority and research" in which "Ritorno al futuro/Back to the Future means trying not to make the same mistakes again, changing attitude, being more aware of our weight on the world and what we can do."[13] Placing the album in ninth place of the 15 best albums of 2022, Umberto Salvato for the same publication, described the record as "the perfect crasis between the artist's past, present and future," calling the production of the songs carried out with "excellent mastery, [...] contemporary without ever betraying itself."[14]
Reviewing the album for Rolling Stone Italia
On February 24, 2022, the album debuted at No. 8 on the Top Albums Debut Global chart of the Spotify platform.[17] It subsequently debuted at No. 1 on the FIMI Albums Chart chart, becoming the Elisa's fifth album to achieve this, following Soundtrack '96–'06 (2006), Heart (2009), L'anima vola (2013) and On (2016).[18] It also peaked on the FIMI Vinyls chart. Ritorno al Futuro/Back to the Future turned out to be the best-selling album by a female artist in Italy in 2022, ranking 33rd on the annual chart.[19]
| Peak position | |
| Italian Albums (FIMI)[20] | 1 |
|---|---|
| Position | ||
| Italian Albums (FIMI)[21] | 33 |
|---|