Lorenzo 2015 CC. / Live 2184

Even if he is into his fourth decade as a recording artist, Jovanotti simply cannot stop making music. With 2015 CC, the man himself was the first to admit that delivering a whopping 30 new tracks at once may be a tad excessive. Indeed, any discussion of this album must focus on its inordinate length. While on previous releases Jovanotti has kept his overflow for deluxe editions and rarities discs, this time around he wanted to include everything from the get-go. 2015 CC is the first double-studio album of his career, but Jovanotti does not use the expanded format to try something different, like a concept album, a new musical direction, or experimental or instrumental tracks. No, these are all typical Jovanotti songs; there are just 30 of them. The fact that every single track lasts about four to five minutes reveals that they all share the same familiar blueprint. To complicate matters further, all of them naturally feature typical Jovanotti lyrics and exude the same positive energy, so that listening to the album feels like hearing 30 relentless, extended monologues of universal goodwill. Case in point: the love songs. As lovely as they all are, they're all about the same kind of happy and peaceful love, with no breakups, betrayal, or pain; love blissfully devoid of negative characters or connotations. Musically, the album is split into three main spheres: worldbeats, ballads, and a continuation of Jovanotti's interest in EDM, already showcased on 2011's excellent Ora. In fact, for quite some time, Jovanotti has been toying with the idea of making a full EDM album, as well as a full hip-hop album, and maybe a Caribbean- or a Brazilian-flavored album. What ultimately happened — again — is that he could not remain faithful to a single idea; he kept writing in a variety of styles (a passionate traveler, he also has a tendency to fall deeply in love with the music of every country he visits, which is great but of course does not help), and in the end he couldn't resign himself to leaving some tracks out. In all fairness, that would have been a difficult decision to make about this batch, because even if most listeners could agree on a half-a-dozen standout songs, very little separates the remaining two dozen, and ultimate judgment of their individual merits will probably depend more on each listener's preference for ballads, dance, or world music than on any other factor. As far as its best moments go, however, 2015 CC appears heavily front-loaded and dance-oriented, with special mention of the killer opening salvo of the wistful "L'alba," the lead-off single "Sabato," and the instant party anthem "Tutto Acceso" adding further weight to the thesis that this was originally intended as an EDM album gone astray — a notion reinforced by Jovanotti tucking away most of the worldbeat jams on the second disc. As it is, 2015 CC remains both a testament to Jovanotti's amazing creative vitality, as well as a warning to the counterproductive effects of boundless enthusiasm.