Elisa, the soulful artist from Portugal, teams up with Giuliano Sangiorgi to paint a vivid picture of love as a liberating force. The singer is stunned into silence by her partner’s presence, comparing the feeling to a sudden springtime and a golden sunbeam that makes the heart “light as air.” Throughout the song she repeats “Ti vorrei sollevare” — “I want to lift you up” — a promise to comfort and protect someone whose faith in love has been shaken. She admits to moments of fear and self–doubt (“For a moment I even wished it were true that I can’t feel anymore”), yet the chorus rises like paper wings catching the wind, inviting her partner to travel, invent, and face life’s gusts together instead of hiding.
As the two lovers stand “lost beneath a thousand stars,” they ask the ancient question, “Cos’è l’amore?” — “What is love?” The answer comes in a gentle plea: hold each other tighter, keep our hearts close, and let love make us weightless. In just a few verses, the song moves from vulnerability to soaring hope, reminding listeners that real love is both a refuge and a launchpad for boundless imagination.
Elisa, born Elisa Toffoli in 1977 in Trieste in northeastern Italy, is one of the country's most acclaimed singer-songwriters. She grew up in the border town of Monfalcone, in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, where hearing many languages early on shaped her rare gift for singing across them.
She debuted in 1997 with the album Pipes & Flowers and, unusually for an Italian artist, built her early career writing and singing mostly in English. Her breakthrough came in 2001, when she won the Sanremo Music Festival with "Luce (Tramonti a nord est)", her first song in Italian, co-written with Zucchero. The song became her first number one at home and remains one of the most beloved Italian pop ballads of its era.