This week suggestion came in from Darren G who said, “Hi John (sic), during the Italy vs Croatia match in Berlin at the recent Euro footballs tournament, the track Freed From Desire by Gala was played which was so big in the 90s, but as well as it’s catchy na-na-na-na-na chorus, there’s a another lyric which I’ve always sung wrongly because I never knew what it was and it sounds like ‘it’s got a tumble lease’, I’ve since looked it up and found it’s ‘My love has got no money, he’s got his strong beliefs’, but what is the story behind that song. Can you enlighten me please?” In a word Darren, hopefully.
Arguably, the mid-90s was the best time for house and dance music in the UK. So many dance anthems came out at that time and many are still played 30 years on; Show Me Love, Finally, I Luv U Baby, Free, Two Can Play That Game, Where Love Lives and Shine On are all good examples. Gala is generally classed as a one hit wonder in the UK and although she had two further, sizable, hits – Let A Boy Cry (no. 11) and Come Into My Life (no.38), but she will always be remembered for the number two hit Freed From Desire.
She was born Gala Rizzatto in Milan in 1975 and is seems she was given the name Gala after Salvador Dali’s wife, Gala Dali even though her real name was Elena Ivanovna Diakonova. The family home was a musical one as her father was a jazz musician and her mother was a singer and by the age of 17 she left home for New York to study at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Post-graduation is when her musical career began initially as a backing singer for various artists and sometimes incorporating a bit of song writing.
In the mid-90s she moved back to Italy and recorded the song Freed From Desire, in an interview with Phil Harrison she explained how and where it began, “When I wrote Freed from Desire, I was living in New York. I was studying photography, which is how I got into music because I was photographing dancers, musicians and DJs. It’s a very personal song. Three things aligned. First, observation of society: in Italy and in Europe, you have a feeling growing up that we’re more or less all the same. But when you come to New York there are drastic differences: there is poverty, there are people who have nothing. And around the corner, there’s a billionaire. Second, my story of reconnecting with my passion, because in Italy, doctors told me that I could not dance because of a back problem so I could not follow my dreams. And the third level was falling in love. My first love was an African dancer, from Senegal. This guy arrives from Africa wanting to dance, living with no money in Harlem. And Harlem had music, they had dance, they had community. And all these three came together in a song that, to me, represents resilience and alignment with your passion.”
In a 2015 interview with Erick Ycaza she explained, “When I was about 12 years old, I was told by an insensitive Italian doctor that I could not dance. Dance was my passion, it was the way I expressed myself. I would come home from kindergarden and primary school and the first thing I would ask my mother was to ‘put on the apple’ (which meant to put on The Beatles’ vinyl records – they had a green apple on them and I would watch it spin on the vinyl player) so I could dance. The day I was told that I could not dance something inside of me broke, it’s still in pieces now… I told myself that anything that I would live from that moment on was like a second life that I granted myself, but I didn’t really care about, because if it was for me I would rather die then.”
Apart from the opening line, ‘My love has got no money, he’s got his strong beliefs’ which is repeated eight times with the word money being substituted for ‘power’ and ‘fame’ in places, The second verse goes, ‘Want more and more, people just want more and more, Freedom and love, what he’s looking for’ and the third verse, which is also the song’s hook, ‘Freed from desire, mind and senses purified’ is a Buddhist prayer, Gala said, “the clubs were my ‘church’ and if I ever had a religion or philosophy of life, Buddhism would be probably the only philosophy that I could feel close to. So, you have no idea how is my pleasure when I see an entire club dancing and singing to these lyrics like a prayer. The song’s most memorable part is the na-na-na section and, in case you’re thinking, ‘I wonder how many ‘na’s’ there are, I’ll save you the trouble, there’s exactly 200.
“Freed From Desire was dedicated to my first love, one of the younger dancers of the National Ballet of Senegal at the time and his wonderful Senegalese community of dancers and drummers,” she continued to Erick. “I was, and I am still, shocked every single day by the injustice, the unfair distribution of wealth in the world. The night I wrote the song I went from a famous uptown restaurant in NY eating with some people I knew, to going back to my boyfriend in Harlem who was sleeping with five other people in a small house and even had big rats in the apartment.
But what was more interesting to me is that he and his friends were so much happier and had the life I dreamt of: playing music and dancing and having a community to support them, while the people uptown seemed so unhappy talking about the jewels they could not afford and the frustrations they had about not getting a bigger house or boat, comparing themselves to richer friends.”
Since around 2010, the song has taken on another life especially on the football terraces. Quite why some songs, or even just tunes, get picked up by football clubs or fans is not clear, but Gala’s anthem was started by a Wigan fan, singing about Northern Irish player Will Grigg, reciting the line, ‘Will Grigg’s on fire, your defence is terrified’. in place of ‘Freed from desire, mind and senses purified’. In 2016, Northern Ireland qualified for Euro 2016 and their fans then began singing it there which reached a new wider audience.
In addition to football, the song has also been sung on women’s marches, student protests marches and LGBTQ+ marches too, of which Gala has said, “I’m happy people find joy in it.” More recently it had an effect on politics because at a National Education Union protest in 2023, protesting teachers at a march began chanting, ‘My pay’s no higher, Rishi Sunak is a liar’.
On its release in 1997, it became an international hit reaching the top 10 in the UK, Iceland, Netherlands, Ireland, Italy and Denmark and went to number one in France and Belgium. In 2018, a cover version by Portuguese singer Drenchill went to number one in Poland.
Gala is still recording and in 2021 she released the song Parallel Lines which tells the story of a couple who are drifting apart whilst they are still living together. Aside from music Gala has been involved in various environmental projects and has worked with animal welfare organizations to raise awareness about animal abuse and neglect.
Last year, she was in a cafe in Italy and told Phil Harrison at The Guardian, “There was a man drinking a beer, my song came on and I heard him talking to the bartender and he said, ‘I like this song. I don’t really understand all of the lyrics but I feel like it’s talking about something important!’ And that really stuck with me.”