The 5 sea songs to listen to (and play) on Easter Monday

When my editor asked me to select five sea songs to listen to (or play) on Easter Monday (“Eugenio, you who are also a musician, this article is in your wheelhouse”) I was at a loss. I really didn’t know which way to turn, looking for an unlikely sea-holiday-music connection at all costs. So I focused on the songs that I would like to listen to on Easter Monday, without too many complications, and after a very long selection, I came up with the five that you will find below. Many of them have “affordable” chords, and I could even play them on the beach with my guitar or on the lawns between fava beans and salami with friends. Here they are in order of old age. Let me know what other songs you would have included, I am curious! Eugene Ruocco

PAOLO CONTE – WAVE UPON WAVE (1974)
This song, taken from the versatile Piedmontese musician’s first album as a songwriter, “Paolo Conte,” has always fascinated me. A desperate situation, such as finding oneself shipwrecked in the middle of the sea after falling off the ship, forgotten by everyone and by one’s partner who is running off with someone else, is surprisingly transformed into paradise. A good life lesson: there is always hope, even in the most dire circumstances.

LUCIO DALLA – HOW DEEP IS THE SEA (1977)
The song, taken from the album of the same name in which Dalla, having ended his association with poet Roberto Roversi, takes the reins from the lyrics for the first time, is in my opinion a great poem that offers multiple levels of reading. Ecologism, pacifism, humanity. But at the center of the narrative is always him, the sea. Deep as thought, which no one can stop.

MORCHEEBA – THE SEA (1998)
This track is perhaps among the least known by Morcheeba, a British trip-hop group that graced the scenes between the 1990s and 2000s with such catchphrases as “Rome wasn’t built in a day”: I find it very soothing and profound, perfectly blended with Skye Edwards’ voice. “I left my anima down there at the bottom of the sea…”

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KULA SHAKER – HURRICANE SEASON (2007)
It is not easy to take the theme of a world-famous jazz standard like Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” (which, as the title suggests, is played in five quarters, a difficult and unusual tempo) and build a folk ballad around it. Even allowing itself to veer, in the instrumental part, into 1970s psychedelic rock. The Kula Shakers, in my opinion, have succeeded perfectly. Among the five songs I propose, this is my favorite, I confess. This gem contained in the album Strangefolk (2007), is about an “outcast” (literally, an outcast) who lives on an island and decides to embark and brave the sea, and finds himself in the middle of a hurricane.

ED SHEERAN – TENERIFE SEA (2014)
A song by the hottest international singer-songwriter of the moment, Englishman Ed Sheeran, could not be missing: in the lyrics, the sea of Tenerife, the Canary Island, allows the beloved woman to fully express her beauty. The song is featured on the 2014 album X.