For the record

Earlier this week I went to a record store here in Bologna (specifically the Ricordi Media Store on Via Ugo Bassi), which was a very enlightening experience, giving me a good opportunity to talk about the kind of music Italians seem to listen to.

One thing that may be a bit surprising is the fact that Italian radio stations play as much English/American music as Italian music, so there's really a mix of both varieties here.  Of course, many don't know what the words to songs by the likes of Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift mean (they don't know what they're missing), but this doesn't seem to hinder their enjoyment too much.

To them, every song is the macarena

Why is this? I'm not quite sure - there are plenty of Italian pop singers, but maybe the sheer volume of English and American imports creates a market for itself.

While one would think that the inability of most Italians to understand English music would decrease the quality of the music that was popular here.  After all, the difference between 2 Chainz and Kanye West, for instance, would be almost non-existent.  Surprisingly, though, Italy is not just a land where catchy American music thrives. Indeed, the record store I went into had a bafflingly random and respectable selection.

Generally, it's broken up into a few sections - there's a pretty large opera section, an Italian music section with the likes of Afterhours and Vasco Rossi, and a section filled with English music.  The contents of this last section are as follows:
 - Typical older music: Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, and David Bowie, but...
 - No Beatles, The Who, or Led Zeppelin
 - An oddly large variety of options from The Pet Shop Boys, of whose songs I can name none
 - Even greater selection of Iggy Pop, who seems to be very popular here in Italy.  They had multiple copies of Raw Power as well as solo albums like The Idiot and Lust for Life, and multiple people that I've met here in Italy are fans.  Granted, he's fairly well liked in the U.S. as well, but it's not like you ever hear "No Fun" or "Nightclubbing" on the radio

Among the ranks of these artists was also a large selection of '90's and 2000's British music (most of the music there actually), which is a score for me.  Here's what I found:
 - Multiple copies of Oasis' (What's the Story) Morning Glory? and a couple copies of Heathen Chemistry.  I almost bought a copy of the latter, but considering it's the album where they jumped the shark in trying to be like The Beatles, I thought I'd wait till I had a copy of the more deserving Be Here Now before getting it, because Oasis cares what order I buy their albums in
 - Every single Coldplay album
 - Radiohead and, shockingly, Kasabian albums
 - Massive Attack, because Italy evidently has very eclectic taste in music
 - and The Verve's Urban Hymns, which I bought (it's pretty solid - more similar to A Storm in Heaven on first listen than I expected)
 - Then in the vinyl section they had Primal Scream's Screamadelica and Pulp's Different Class, although the vinyl section tends to be more out there - in Providence I went to a record store that had a vinyl copy of Slowdive's impossible to find last album, Pygmalion

Basically, Italians listen to American music but are also apparently all about that recent British alternative.  I've got to admit, I'm kind of impressed and amused by their taste.