Bugo, a retirement (and a new beginning?)
One of my favorite artists, Italian singer-songwriter Bugo, has announced his retirement from music. He shared this news "personally1" during a press conference. I’m sad that it has come to this; I wouldn’t have wanted it. Yet, my first thought was... FINALLY!
Let me explain: Bugo has always tied his name to well-defined projects, specifically each of his albums and their respective promotional tours. There have certainly been other side ventures—brief tours unrelated to any album, appearances in films, his participation to Pechino Express, a Kickstarter for a documentary2 that didn’t reach its funding goal, and visual art during his time in India—but the core of his "artistic persona" has always been his albums. Bugo has prided himself on his ability to reinvent himself with each major record, changing both the musical genre (while still staying within the singer-songwriter realm) and his aesthetic. For instance, during his time with major labels, he started off raw and scruffy with his first album, became more polished with the second, embraced an alternative vibe with the third, returned to a stylish and trendy look with the fourth, then went for a simple and direct approach with the fifth, and finally explored a retrowave sound with the sixth.
I wonder what has made his journey—and its conclusion—different from those of artists like Vasco Rossi, David Bowie, or his arch-nemesis Morgan from Bluvertigo. I could be wrong, but I think there’s a common thread among all three of these artists: they created a "character." In contrast, Bugo has always been himself, despite the changes in his aesthetic. He has tried to be more rock, more electronic, more raw, or more refined, yet his true self has always shone through.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I think of John Dwyer (of Oh Sees, Coachwhips, and many other projects) and how he always puts himself out there without adopting a character. The difference is that, unlike Bugo, Dwyer is a cornucopia of creativity, continuously producing music without stopping, except for a few months during tours. He releases at least one album a year for his main project and sometimes one or two for other projects. Bugo, on the other hand, releases an album every two or three years, each in a completely different genre, and he rarely collaborates with other projects. While he creates high-quality records, they have never captured the public's attention like his first two albums, and interest in his career has gradually faded over the years. The "feud" with Morgan in 2020 was merely a resurgence of a notoriety that had already been quite inconsistent.
Vasco would leave the Ariston stage dropping the microphone, singing about drugs and trivialities as if he were Allen Ginsberg of his time. Bowie was theatrical and had alter egos with their own "titles," like Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke, and every album he released shook the music world at least until the late '80s. As for Morgan, well, he’s a television personality who is quite pitiful on a human level, yet he boosts ratings, and if he stopped being over-the-top, no one would pay him any attention.
Bugo is neither like Dwyer, nor like Vasco, nor like Bowie, nor like Morgan. He is a case apart—just an ordinary guy, albeit with undeniable talent in performing and songwriting—who managed to climb aboard the major label bandwagon but was unable to leverage that platform to become a "big" of his time.
I’m glad that Bugo is retiring because I hope he can take advantage of the opportunity this retirement gives him: finally, he no longer has to sell the "Bugo" brand and can truly dedicate himself to loving music in its most visceral, immediate, immature, and ignorant form—namely, self-production. Seeing and hearing new material from him is my current dream, but I would love to see something completely out of the box, different—other projects, other musicians, equal collaborations, perhaps a band or a duo where he can do what he has never been able to do because of his dedication to the "Bugo" project. I wish him that, of course, but I also hope he understands how this can happen within his very personal artistic sphere. I hope to hear from him again, and I truly think, "per fortuna che c'è Bugo".