Sultry voice, poetic lyrics and surprising harmonies are just a part of the recipe that makes Chiara's music so irresistible.
The distance she has traveled is both musical and spiritual-literally stretching across the Atlantic Ocean. Born in Rome, Chiara was encouraged to play the piano by her grandmother; she kids that her nonna's out-of-tune upright afforded the best ear training. She briefly tried the acoustic guitar, but that ended almost comically with a drive to get some gelato. "The little car only had two doors," she remembers. "When I sat down, I broke the neck of the guitar. That was it for me. No more guitar. My mother said, 'You'd better sing, girl!'"
Chiara had already been in some classical choirs, but was looking for something freer than the operatic traditions of her homeland. A friend suggested that she learn jazz; she'd never heard of it. A little investigation brought her to a private music school that she would attend through her four years of high school: the St. Louis Music Academy in Rome. When she was sixteen, Chiara began singing professionally and won a scholarship to the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. She enrolled there from 1994-98. By the first year Chiara was a regular on the Boston club scene, performing with different bands.
But her journey didn't end with Boston or jazz. Chiara's move to New York City was inevitable. Searching for something musically closer to her Mediterranean roots, she immersed herself in Latin and Brazilian music, learning Spanish and Portuguese along the way. She also wrote her first song, "Parole Incerte" ("Uncertain Words"), about the misunderstandings that can come from the distance between a person and her loved ones.
Meanwhile, two of Chiara's bandmates - pianist Alain Mallet and drummer Jamey Haddad - had begun working with Paul Simon and invited her to a rehearsal. It was there that she met producer Russ Titelman and left him with a demo of "Parole Incerte." He called the very next day and insisted, "You are a songwriter. Forget about everything else you are doing. You have to write." Chiara began composing lyrics in English. She studied the work of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor.
Titelman let president and CEO of Verve hear the song and the next day Chiara was offered a record deal that not only allowed her to enter the studio but made her the first Italian born to be signed by Verve Records.
From this series of encouraging and exciting encounters emerged the 10 original compositions included on her debut album LAST QUARTER MOON, Verve2005; seven written by herself and three co-writes, including the brooding ballad "Trouble" that was co-written with legend Burt Bacharach. "I had almost every song on the album," recalls Chiara, "when Russ called me to say that Burt Bacharach was interested in writing with me." "Trouble" came together during a three day session at Bacharach's Los Angeles home. Chiara arrived with an idea for the melody; they shaped and refined it as a team.
The first album granted her a first round of the world and great position in the charts of italy and Japan.
Billboard Magazine noted that, “the beauty, charm and allure of singer/pianist/songwriter Chiara Civello’s debut…makes for an auspicious beginning and marks the first revelation of the New Year.” The International Herald Tribune declared “her combination of personality, soulfulness and sophistication…striking.”
The second album The Space Between (2007 Universal Classic and Jazz) produced by Steve Addabbo , shows a more intimate and immediate side of the singer songwriter, leading us us through a journey of thirteen beautiful moments where we feel we can get really close to her.
“This is a record about ‘the space between’. The space between the notes, the silence between words, the space between me and you, me and my past, me and my future, and all the spaces between that nowadays are so difficult to stop and think about….the space between that makes you feel the reality better, the space that makes you miss someone, the space between that makes you not say everything all at once, but bit by bit, as the need of saying it gets stronger in you. The space between what I think and what I say… In Italy, we have a saying: Between saying and doing, there is the sea.”
The album entered successfully the Italian and Japanese chiarts and led her to new important artistic collaborations.
Definitely an itinerant soul, Chiara describes her life as:” My home is the world, as long as there’s a piano at the destination, my world fits in a suitcase, the rest I carry with me : my computer and my guitar.
"Jazz was the most incredible diving machine when it came to going really deep into music," says Civello, about her path of discovery, one sure to continue in the future. "But I knew I couldn't be the new Ella Fitzgerald; I couldn't be the new Shirley Horn. I learned all different kinds of music and then I said to myself, 'I need to find my own voice. Time to unlearn now, time to be free.' It's like a hot air balloon: To be able to fly you have to throw off the sandbags. I want to be as light as I can-light as a feather."
“In the first album you search, in the second you focus, in the third you find yourself…. and here I am,” says Chiara Civello in describing her third album titled “7752” of upcoming release.
7752 is the distance in Kilometers from New York City to Rio de Janeiro, the two cities that provided the inspiration for this album. New York is where Chiara lives, while Rio changed Chiara’s life…
While visiting her friend, Daniel Jobim, in Rio in February 2008, Chiara was taken to a party (known as SARAO) where artists and musicians of all kinds get together. The guitar went around and everyone sang a song. As Chiara shared, listened, and learned, a new phase of her artistic path began.
“Co-writing I was already familiar with,” says Chiara, “since those unforgettable three days spent in Santa Monica in which I wrote Trouble with Burt Bacharach for my first album…but in Brazil everyone co writes. It’s a big party, everyone shares and dares and makes it happen.”
Ana Carolina, a Brazilian pop star, is one of the main collaborators of 7752. Not only did she co-write five of the songs with Chiara, but she also played acoustic guitar on most of them. “We met at that party and she asked me if I had a melody for her, so the next day I started RESTA, a song that soon after we finished together and sang as a duet live in Sao Paulo.” Success has already accompanied the collaboration with Ana Carolina, as RESTA will be featured on the new Novela of Globo TV called “Passione,” starting on May 17, 2010.
Written between Rio, New York, and Trastevere (Rome), 7752 includes ten musical moments of which eight were recorded in NYC (and produced by the eclectic producer Andres Levin), while four were recorded in Rio and produced by Chiara herself.
“All my friends and favorite musicians merged into this record in the most natural way…it was like bringing the Rio spirit into the studio: Mauro Refosco (Thom Yorke, David Byrne, Forro’ in The Dark) and Guilherme Monteiro (Ron Carter, Forro in The Dark) had already recorded with me and I couldn’t possibly think of a record without them, Anat Cohen is one of my best friends and I have always wanted to have her on my album but we never were able to make it happen; Jaques Morelenbaum is one of the most talented and sentimental musicians I have ever met; Mark Ribot was the perfect guy for these songs, not to mention the great rhythm section that Andres brought in the studio, Gene Lake on the drums and Jonathan Maron on the bass. Ana Carolina who wrote most of the songs with me already owned them on the acoustic guitar and added her tremendous groove to them”.
Already defined as an “enticing and contagious” album, 7752 sounds lively, while portraying a new, playful and joyous aspect of Chiara’s singing and songwriting. The sound is a beautiful alchemy among the 60s, Italian melody, Brazilian harmonies, and R&B.
http://www.chiaracivello.com
Don
Chiara Civello Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
You said you would always stay
It wasn't me who changed but you
And now you've gone away
Don't you see that now you've gone
And I'm left here on my own
That I have to follow you
And beg you to come homeYou don't have to say you love me
Just be close at hand
You don't have to stay forever
I will understand
Believe me, believe me
I can't help but love you
But believe me, I'll never tie you down
Left alone with just a memory
Life seems dead and so unreal
All that's left is loneliness
There's nothing left to feel
Oh, You don't have to say you love me
Just be close at hand
You don't have to stay forever
I will understand
Believe me, believe me
I can't help but love you
Believe me, I'll never tie you down
Oh believe me
Oh believe me
Oh
You don't have to say you love me
Just be close at hand
You don't have to stay forever
I will understand
Believe me
Believe me
Oh
Believe me
The lyrics to Chiara Civello's song "Don" convey a sense of heartbreak and longing, as the singer pleads with her lover to return to her. The song begins with the singer expressing her need for her lover, who originally promised to stay with her always. She notes that it was not her who changed, but instead, it was her lover who left. The singer is left alone and feeling empty and now must beg for her lover to come home.
As the song progresses, the singer makes it clear that she does not need her lover to profess his love for her, but instead, she just wants him to be close to her. She expresses that she will understand if he cannot stay forever, but she cannot help but love him. The singer ends the song by repeating the lines, "You don't have to say you love me, just be close at hand, you don't have to stay forever, I will understand."
The lyrics convey a sense of vulnerability and desperation as the singer tries to hold on to her lover. Despite her love for him, she understands that she cannot force him to stay. The song leaves the listener with a feeling of sadness and longing as they hear the singer's plea for her lover's return.
Line by Line Meaning
When I said I needed you
When I told you that I depended on you
You said you would always stay
You promised me that you would never leave
It wasn't me who changed but you
I am still the same person, but you have changed
And now you've gone away
And now you have left me alone
Don't you see that now you've gone
Can't you see that now that you are gone
And I'm left here on my own
I am left here all by myself
That I have to follow you
That I have to beg you to come back
And beg you to come home
And plead with you to return to me
You don't have to say you love me
You don't have to express your love for me verbally
Just be close at hand
Just be near me, physically or emotionally
You don't have to stay forever
You don't have to commit to staying with me forever
I will understand
I will accept your decision and not hold it against you
Believe me, believe me
Trust me, trust me
I can't help but love you
I cannot control my feelings of love for you
But believe me, I'll never tie you down
But trust me, I will not hold you back or restrict your freedom
Left alone with just a memory
Now that you're gone and all I have is memories
Life seems dead and so unreal
Life feels empty and meaningless without you
All that's left is loneliness
All that remains is a feeling of loneliness
There's nothing left to feel
There are no more emotions or feelings left inside of me
Oh, You don't have to say you love me
Oh, you don't have to verbally express your love for me
Just be close at hand
Just be near me, physically or emotionally
You don't have to stay forever
You don't have to commit to staying with me forever
I will understand
I will accept your decision and not hold it against you
Believe me, believe me
Trust me, trust me
I can't help but love you
I cannot control my feelings of love for you
Believe me, I'll never tie you down
Trust me, I will not hold you back or restrict your freedom
Oh believe me
Oh, trust me
Oh believe me
Oh, trust me
Oh
An exclamation of emotion
You don't have to say you love me
You don't have to verbally express your love for me
Just be close at hand
Just be near me, physically or emotionally
You don't have to stay forever
You don't have to commit to staying with me forever
I will understand
I will accept your decision and not hold it against you
Believe me
Trust me
oh
An exclamation of emotion
Believe me
Trust me
Oh
An exclamation of emotion
Believe me
Trust me
Lyrics © null
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@ДжерриМерфи
God,so beautiful
@sklovino
Chiara! Bellissima!