“Caro Amico”: choosing love without making noise - MADDALENA

Maddalena Morielli, known as Maddalena, is a Rome-born singer-songwriter, class of ’98. Raised between Franco Battiato and Lana Del Rey, her music blends a vintage artistic sensibility with dense lyrics and electronic textures, without ever losing intimacy.

She debuted in 2021 with Anxiety is a modern cliché, a bilingual track produced by Andrea Rigonat that immediately received strong critical attention. Before continuing her discographic path, Maddalena chose to pause: to study, observe, and refine her artistic identity. She earned a degree in Aesthetic Philosophy in Rome and later moved to Milan, determined to turn music into her profession.

In 2024, she reached the finals of Area Sanremo with Sogni d’oro e d’argento. That same spring, she opened several dates of the Palajova and Cristiano De André tours, consolidating a live presence increasingly recognized across Italy.

Maddalena on Caro Amico takes a quieter direction: telling a love story that doesn’t come from trauma, but from slow transformation. An emotional and artistic choice that goes against the grain, in a landscape that often demands pain as proof of truth.

Caro Amico” tells a love story that doesn’t come from a wound or from salvation. In a system that makes visible only what hurts, writing about a healthy love can feel like a risky choice. Did it ever make you feel less “readable” as an artist?

I don’t think so… it’s simply a less common choice to talk about happy love stories.

It often feels like emotional intensity can’t exist without suffering. Are we using pain as a certificate of authenticity, even when it no longer belongs to us?

I believe that the songs that truly shake us and speak to our hearts — whether sad or happy — come from a real urgency rooted in personal experience.

The song grows out of a friendship that slowly turns into something else, without exploding. When a relationship changes like that, do you trust the transformation or fear breaking its balance?

Balance is very delicate, and the fear of compromising a beautiful friendship is real. But when love is on the other side, there’s no experience more exciting than a friendship turning into a great passion.

Before this moment, you paused: study, silence, movement. Not to disappear, but to understand. What did you have to leave behind to get here?

Some parts of myself I had to lovingly leave behind, but along the way I recovered great resources… and today I’m ready to reveal my music.

Today, artists are often expected to be emotionally accessible at all times. How much of what you show is a conscious choice, and how much is a response to the system?

We artists are fragile beings and we need to protect ourselves, sharing only when we feel ready and calm. Caro Amico tells a beautiful story and a beautiful memory that I chose to keep, tell, and share.

When you don’t have to explain a song, uphold a public identity, or tell a story — who remains when no one is watching?

What comes out in my songs is very sincere, and I don’t feel disconnected from my musical project at all. Fortunately, we are complex beings, constantly evolving. Each of us is a world made of parts, some of which are still unknown even to ourselves… thankfully, otherwise it would be so boring.

Listen to Caro Amico the way you listen to a memory that doesn’t hurt.

Not to understand it — but to stay inside that space.