Perdere l'amore

Perdere l'amore won the Sanremo Festival in 1988, written by Giampiero Artegiani and Marcello Marrocchi and sung by Massimo Ranieri, who had spent most of the previous decade working in theatre rather than in music. The victory returned him to the charts after a long absence, and the song has since been voted repeatedly among the most significant in the festival's history. Its structure is unusually severe for a Sanremo entry — no bridge, a single melodic idea driven upward through three keys — and it ends on a sustained high note without any orchestral cushion.