22. February 2025
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Songs Of My Life: Toto Cutugno – Insieme: 1992

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

The Russian offensive war in the Ukraine hit me mentally very strongly. I have some lovely people and contacts over there. Just on top of that it is disgusting that one European country is attacking another for purely offensive rationale and against all international law. Music is a way I typically deal with feelings and problems. A track I listened to very frequently while staying in the United Arab Emirates, in fear for my friends, is Insieme: 1992 by Toto Cutugno. Definitely a Song of my Life. It is by the way the second song in Italian released in 1990 in this category, after Un’ Estate Italiana.

 

Insieme – The Story of the Song

Toto Cutugno was born as Salvatore Cutugno on 7th Juli 1943 in Tuscany. His career also includes being a TV. His bio comes with quite a lot of music competitions. For example, he competed fifteen times at the Festival della Canzone Italiana, the Italian pop festival also known as the Sanremo Festival. He won it with Solo noi in 1980.

The story of Insieme: 1992 starts with the Sanremo festival as well. In 1990, he had a second place there with Gli amori, but the song just finished second. As the winner, Pooh, refused to represent Italy in the Eurovisipn Song Contest, Cutugno took over that duty and won with Insieme: 1992, which he in fact wrote by himself. The song has been a European hit, but had more success in Austria (#3) and Switzerland (#2) than in Italy, where the song had a peak of position of 14th. However, the artist never had a chart-topper in Italia, two songs, Solo noi (1980) and L’italiano (1983) were fairly close as 2nd placed song. The latter, however, topped the Swiss charts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b5whZydVZc

Insieme: 1992 is promoting a united Europe. It comes with the spirit of all the political movements during that time, especially the breakdown of the Soviet Union.

Sempre più liberi noi
Non è più un sogno e non sei più da solo
Sempre più in alto noi
Dammi una mano che prendiamo il volo
L’Europa non è lontana
C’è una canzone italiana per voi
Insieme, unite, unite, Europe

(“We’re more and more free
It’s no longer a dream and you’re no longer alone
We’re higher and higher
Give me your hand, so that we can fly
Europe is not far away
This is an Italian song for you
Together, unite, unite, Europe”)

 

Interestingly, the song is rather a negative turning point for the career of the Italian. He never had a successful or remarkable song thereafter, even though he published albums until the mid 2000’s. By the way, German listeners may know Cutugno’s song in a schlager version, Extreme by Roland Kaiser.

 

Insieme – My Story of the Song

As I said in my initial posting about the war on Ukrainian soil, I feel gifted to have so many wonderful people and contacts all over the world. I feel being rather European than German. Definitely, I appreciate the different cultures in our continent, but overall, I feel many of us are sharing a common feeling. I don’t want to weigh the Russian brutal attack on the Ukraine with other events happening to Europe in the last 90 years. However, it has a huge potential to change the way Europe is set up and working as much as what has been happening in 1989 and 1990. This time, in a negative way, though.

The more I feel we need to go back and focus what we have in common. I feel that it is so encouraging that hundreds of thousands of people have been on the street to show support to the Ukraine. I feel that it is good that there is suddenly a great support in Germany to take the big effort and turn the German army into modern armed forced. We need to defend the Ukraine with goods, with actions and with moral support. But we should also defend what we believe is valuable. Freedom, friendship, equality, democracy. Ain’t it great that these simple words by Toto Cutugno feel to define it is a magical way? Insieme, Unite l’Europa – or simply Unite Europe.

 

Insieme – Spotify and Lyrics

Here is the song on Spotify:

You can read the lyrics in Italian and English on the website linked.

 

 

Songs Of My Life Playlist

I created a playlist with all the Songs Of My Life songs so far. It will be updated with very new episode:

 

Songs Of My Life

Here are the postings of the personal Songs Of My Life category:

 

Italian Music & Media

Here are all Music & Media postings related to Italy:

 

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