Emma Marrone: I’m single but not alone

This article is published in the number 25-26 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until July 4, 2023

Emma Brownleaning against the sidewalk wall outside the restaurant, arranges her messy bun with teenage swagger, distressed (but couture) jeans and T-shirt with lettering We Should All Be Feministthe phrase of the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie made iconic by Dior. «I bought it», she specifies, to clarify that for her this is a deliberate statement, not just an aesthetic choice. Looking at her like this, one almost forgets that Emma will turn 40 next year, 15 of which have been spent eating up the stage and the rankings, winning awards and platinum records that we can’t count anymore.

«I didn’t want to be a singer, I wanted to be a famous singer» he jokes, but not so much. You see it in her eyes that when she wants something she gets it. However, success is measured in autonomy, not in sales. “You can’t imagine the satisfaction of having bought a house with my job, not depending on anyone is something my parents have always encouraged me to do”. I imagine it more than you think, but the key to this pride for her is all in that possessive adjective: “mine”. When she talks about her family, Emma shifts her posture, lights up, and I know I’m dealing with one of the lucky few people who doesn’t seem to have a family trauma. To be the beloved daughter of two who loved each other until their last day however, it is a double-edged sword: with the bar of sentimental expectations positioned so high, who can skip it? «I don’t pose the problem. My purpose in life is to fulfill myself, not to find a partner. Sure, I’m made of flesh and there are nights when I’d like to find someone at home waiting for me, trivially even in bed, but this feeling never leads me to think that anyone would be fine. I’m single, but not alone, I have many families.

We know that love wasn’t enough for her since the album’s release Back in 2013, but the plural use of the term family is risky these days. «For me it is not, indeed. I have that of origin and we are very close, but after so many years I also consider my professional family, because the bonds that are created by working together are very strong and I am a person who is faithful to affection. With the move to Rome I then built a group of intimate friendships, four people, who are my refuge and on whom I know I can always count. By character I can be without a partner, but not without a community of affections. Then finding a man is not easy ».

I wouldn’t say, they are everywhere. «But what men? Those of my generation are weak and scared, indecisive. They are afraid of autonomous and strong women. It is as if we have taken a step forward to be freer and in the meantime they are still in the same spot as before. Sometimes I meet up with friends and we all say the same thing: finding a man who isn’t afraid of us, of what we’ve been capable of becoming, is very difficult.”

It’s a common feeling. Discrimination has pushed women to evolve in order not to succumb and men, who were basically fine where they were, didn’t feel the need to develop growth paths. «But I have not experienced discrimination as a disadvantage. There’s sexism in all circles, but a man who doesn’t have to face the obstacles placed on us can’t even imagine what it’s like to get to where you were told you couldn’t go. Resistance has brought out a determination for me that I never would have known I had if it had all been easy».

Emma has a bright anger on her, the healthy anger that making money isn’t enough to extinguish, the one that pushes you to expose yourself on ethical issues even when everyone around you tells you not to meddle. Like when he joined the indignation over the pushbacks of migrants and the persecution of the aid ship Sea Watch. “Forget politics and think about singing,” the haters told her, which is like saying not thinking at all. «I have my father as a model, who raised me with his example of justice and generosity. He was a nurse and when he came home he gave injections and medications to the whole neighborhood, often for those who could not afford them ». The father is Emma’s inner charm. «Not all women have difficult relationships with their parents, I had a beautiful bond with mine. He was not only a father to me, but also a son, a friend, a companion in adventures. Some nights we’d go out and come back tipsy, with my mother waiting for us at the door. When my friends came to dinner and at the end of the evening they would sneak out to smoke, my father would look at them and say: guys, you can make a joint here too. Mum says I’m the one who looks the most like him.’

Emma’s father, a nurse and musician who initiated her into the stage at the age of nine, catching her talent, passed away last year from leukemia. «When he died I was away for a couple of days, I had heard him the night before, “I take a flight tomorrow morning and at 13 I’m already with my legs under the table”. I’ll wait for you, she replied. But in the morning he was dead. When I saw my brother’s number I immediately understood, on the other side I could hear my mother’s screams, it was terrible. And I wasn’t there.” The sense of guilt in these cases can do more harm than the mourning itself, but not in her. “I have no regrets. In fact, I think it’s a gift from her. He felt that he was going to die and I am convinced that he wanted to spare me from his death, so that I would remember him alive and happy in the call the night before ».

What kind of parent did a woman who had parents like this think she would become as a young girl? “I never imagined myself a mother. There were moments in which I said to myself: if it comes it comes, children will also be born out of unconsciousness, but it was not my goal ». Then came the illnesses, a uterine cancer, two recurrences. «The first time I took it as a fact that could happen, with the others it was more complicated, I treated it but then I said: enough, let’s remove the ovary. I could still have a child, but the priority for me is music.” Would you resort to gestation for others? «I have no ideological resistance, but I have the choice: if I wanted I could still do it myself with fertilization. In Italy, however, you have to be a couple and it is a vision of medieval parenting. Why do I have to have a partner to be a mother? First they tell you: you don’t have enough children, then you try to have them and they put a thousand obstacles in front of you». I can’t blame her and why should I? Seated at that table we were two similar women, with an autonomy, a world of relationships, an idea of ​​love and a relationship with motherhood that does not coincide with any tradition and that 40 years ago would still have made us define not emancipated, but simply alone. Perhaps this lifestyle is not yet the norm, but it is no longer the anomaly either, because millions of people, especially women, by changing the conditions themselves, have already changed the shape of a social context which, from a model of relationship and life, continues to legitimize only one.

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