It’s not a lullaby as you might think from the title. Indeed, the song that Ermal Meta he chose to bring to the Sanremo stage is a piece with a very fast pace, halfway between Latin and Balkan sounds. Yet, his Little star it arises from a silent encounter, from a gaze that stays with you and never lets go. It is the gaze of a little girl from Gaza, nameless and yet capable of telling the story of an entire people: present in everyone’s words, but too often forgotten in deeds.
As the singer says, the song arrived suddenly, in a few hours, as happens when an emotion asks for space and can no longer wait. Then the meeting with Dardustto give it a broader, stronger sound shape, almost as if to support the weight of what those words guard.
In Ermal Meta’s memory, difficult images remain, those that flow on social media and which one must choose to open because they are marked as “sensitive content”. Of all of them, it was that little girl’s face that penetrated him most deeply.
Meanwhile, it’s night, he says. Fortuna, her one and a half year old baby, sleeps in the house. After cradling her, she goes down to the studio and that melody created for her comes back to be heard, but it changes direction, it is filled with another urgency. “Starlet” is no longer just a caress whispered before sleep: it becomes a stinging question, which asks to be looked at without taking your eyes off.
How do you tell a child what is happening? How do we find understandable words when we adults, first and foremost, struggle to really understand? In this fragile space, suspended between innocence and pain, the song takes shape: a delicate attempt to remain human, to continue looking for light even where there seems to be none anymore.
The text of Little star
by E. Meta – G. Pollex – D. Faini – E. Meta
Ed. Tadi & Bali Music Publishing/
Universal Music Publishing Memories/
DRD/Warner Chappell Music Italiana
Little star
The night is approaching
A prayer is not enough
To never think about it again
Spring awaits from the hill
But what was there isn’t there
You’re no longer here
I found your doll
I thought I saw you again
You were so little
You held her until the evening
It’s already been an eternity
Or just an hour
Since when there was a cloud in the sky
It comes from your house
From my house
Little star
The night is approaching
A prayer is not enough
To never think about it again
Spring awaits from the hill
But what was there isn’t there
You’re no longer here
I tried to tear my heart out
Because without it you don’t die
But I was scared in the process
To not feel anything anymore
I even thought about running away
From a land that doesn’t want us
But I don’t know where to go
I cannot stay between walls and the sea
Little star
The night is approaching
A prayer is not enough
To never think about it again
Spring awaits from the hill
But what was there isn’t there
You’re no longer here
Flowers in a courtyard with stones around
Like butterflies you lived a day
Nobody’s daughter, melody of a song
That of the people who loved you so much
Oh, my little girl, the night is black
Anger and prayer will no longer be enough
From the hill will come a spring
In the evening wind you will be there too
Little star
The night is approaching
A prayer is not enough
To never think about it again
From the hill will come a spring
In the evening wind you will be there too
I haven’t forgotten you
I await your return
Like butterflies
You only lived one day
