𝚅𝚘𝚕𝚎𝚟𝚘 𝙴𝚜𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚞𝚗 𝙳𝚞𝚛𝚘; 𝙻𝚞𝚌𝚒𝚘 𝙲𝚘𝚛𝚜𝚒

Volevo Essere un Duro (I Wanted to be a Tough Guy) by Lucio Corsi tells a story of failure through childhood imagination. In the first and third verses, Corsi uses examples like ‘a robot’, ‘a hen that lays golden eggs’, and ‘the magpie that steals your wedding ring’ to show how ridiculous a child’s dreams can be, as these goals are near enough impossible to fulfill. However, in those verses, Corsi also writes ‘a drug dealer on the run from wolves’ and ‘the mugger waiting for you in the dark’ to show how dreams can become less ambitious over time, and can fluctuate, as being a drug dealer or a mugger are typically viewed as lowly places in society.

During the chorus, Corsi sings ‘living life is child's play’, which shows how life is said to be “easy” or “simple”, as children aren’t seen as complex individuals, and neither is their play. By comparing something as big as ‘life’ to something as shallow as ‘child’s play’, Corsi makes it almost diminishing, like how comparing a tiger to a mouse is. He later follows this line with ‘as I fell from trees’, showing how even from an early age, that failure was there, as climbing trees is an activity done mostly by children (which could also be called “child’s play”), and by falling from the tree, you are failing to climb it, so by failing to climb the tree when he was a child, that feeling of failure has followed him, influencing his imagination since.

Later, at the end of the song, Corsi sings ‘I’m nothing but Lucio’, showing his acceptance of his failure, as he is recognising the fact that he is ‘nothing but Lucio’, therefore, ‘nothing but’ himself, and if he is just a failure, then that’s okay. However, it also shows that all he sees in himself are his failures and flaws, and that ‘Lucio’ is just one big ball of failure.