Kaleidoscopic music video, shimmering shirts and colorful ties, coastline full of sunsets… and above all this repetitive verse which sticks in the ear from the first listen: “Let’s go to the beach, oh oh oh oh oh”. First released in June 1983, the title track from Italian band Righeira has all the essential ingredients of a summer musical hit. Aside, perhaps, from its disturbing post-apocalyptic prophecy.
Listen instead.
“Let’s go to the beach, the bomb exploded” (Let’s go to the beach, the bomb exploded)/
Radiation toasts and shades blue (Roasted radiations and shades of blue)/
Let’s go to the beach, everyone with hats (Let’s go to the beach, everyone has their own hat)/
The radioactive wind ruffles the hair (The radioactive wind ruffles the hair).
Let’s go to the beach, finally the sea is clean (Let’s go to the beach, finally the sea is cleaned)/
No more smelly fish (No more smelly fish)/
But fluorescent water (But water is fluorescent).»
An atomic tube
We might as well admit it right away: the deep meaning of the lyrics – sung in Spanish by an Italian duo – undoubtedly escaped its first audience in the summer of 1983. Under the umbrellas or disco balls, we sang along to this legendary chorus without asking too many questions. “Vamos a la playa” is one of those wise and exotic hits that we appreciate thoroughly, before throwing it away at the end of summer, like an old tube of sunscreen encrusted with sand.
However, “Vamos a la playa” was not intended to be a throwaway song, because it is a resolutely committed title. Co-written in 1981 by Johnson King (real name Stefano Righi) and by producer Carmelo La Bionda, this song draws its few lyrics from the heavy context of the Second Cold War, a phase of escalation of American-Soviet tensions between 1975 and 1985.
At the same time, in fact, the two superpowers are blindly continuing their collection of nuclear weapons. American President Ronald Reagan was very hostile towards the USSR, whom he baptized “The Evil Empire” a March 1983. His Soviet counterpart Yuri Andropov responded by qualifying US diplomacy “obscenities interspersed with hysterical preaching”. Each camp flexes its muscles: the number of nuclear warheads in the hands of the two superpowers is estimated at 50,000, or a million times the firepower released in Hiroshima.
Located in the center of the East-West chessboard, Europe trembled with fear in the early 1980s. The Soviets deployed their missiles in 1977 SS-20 aimed at NATO forces. In retaliation, the Americans installed missiles Pershing II in the United Kingdom, West Germany (FRG) and the Netherlands. In 1983, Ronald Reagan unveiled the Strategic Defense Initiative, a military defense program which plans the deployment of a futuristic anti-missile shield. The movie Return of the Jedithird part of the saga Star Wars being released the same year, the press mocked the project as “Star Wars”.
The hit parades in resistance
What to do? On the Old Continent, resistance is being organized. A pacifist organization, Nuclear Disarmament in Europeadvocates for peace and the defusing of nuclear warheads, ensuring that armed conflict would spell the end of humanity. “We are entering the most dangerous decade in human history, ensures the movement in its first bulletinin April 1980. A “Third World War” is not only possible, but increasingly likely.”
As is often the case in history, the anxiety of extinction insinuates itself into the cultural landscape. Films, novels and successful songs depict a sad and extinct world, saturated with radiation, where humanity is perishing in the smoking ruins of its civilization. Several pop hits from the early 1980s relay this atomic anguish: «We Kill The World» de Boney M (1981), “99 balloons” from Nena (1983), «Forever Young» d’Alphaville (1984), «Russians» by Sting (1985) or even «Land of Confusion» from Genesis (1986).
Piece after piece, hit after hit, the European charts denounce the murderous madness of the Americans and Russians. Imitating many artists of the time, the Italo-disco duo of the Righeira brothers seize this hot topic, infusing their discreet pacifism between the lines of “Vamos a la playa”. The discreet moral of this misunderstood song will have taught us at least one thing: singing and dancing also means building peace.
Source: www.slate.fr
