The single arrives with an unusual visual and sonic identity. Its imagery revolves around golden skulls that recall Damien Hirst's diamond-encrusted work, and its lyrics push irony toward the grotesque. "I wanted to be a popstar but I'm Diletta Leotta," Cremonini sings, addressing those who believe paparazzi more than anything else in the world, before adding that "the truth is a bigger lie, they caught you once but the photo was blurry."
Musically, the track was produced, in Cremonini's words, "like the debut single of an alternative band that came out of a London suburb", aiming to shake listeners again through a rough groove, a riff of sinuous guitars and an international sound. The singer said he chose "Paparazzi" as the first single precisely because it carries "that raw and adrenaline-filled sound of the beginnings".
"It's the sound I wanted to hear when I turned on the radio and I told myself: I can try to do it myself," Cremonini said. "I tried to grow together with my music and in the end I discovered that the destination was enjoying the freedom of making it. Playing while forgetting yourself, going back to being a debutant, removing the mask of the artist and of the career so that you can be surprised. This is what I would like to communicate with the title 'Amateur': an artistic gesture, as well as an album of songs."
The recording brought together a completely renewed band, formed from a meeting between musicians from the English alternative scene and some of the most authoritative names on the international circuit. Alongside Cremonini and his long-standing core of producers Alessandro Magnanini and Alessandro De Crescenzo, the track features Malcolm Catto on drums, Donny McCaslin on saxophones and producer and musician Paul Stacey on guitars. The line-up, the singer's camp says, helps define his new sound by combining different musical backgrounds and origins in an evident search for new paths.
Standing beside Cremonini in "Amateur" is SIG, the golden-skulled character who accompanies the project visually. A musician and symbolic figure, SIG embodies the return to the sound and attitude of bands and the desire to strip back the sound and image of pop, freeing them of the superfluous. His figure is born from the short circuit between death and luxury, desire and representation, and looks to Hirst's celebrated skull, which turns an ancient symbol of mortality into a dazzling and seductive object. SIG thus concentrates on himself everything that accumulates around the music and the artist, leaving Cremonini free to put the sound back at the centre.
The video for "Paparazzi", directed by Pepsy Romanoff and produced by Except, will be available on all digital platforms from Friday.
New dates have also been added to the Amatour. The run opens on 24 November at the Palaprometeo in Ancona, a newly announced date zero, followed by five shows at the Unipol Arena in Bologna on 27, 28 and 30 November, all sold out, plus 2 December, 4 December, sold out, and a new date on 5 December. The tour then moves to the Inalpi Arena in Turin on 9 and 10 December, before five nights at the Unipol Forum in Milan on 15, 16, 18, sold out, 19 and a newly added 21 December.