By Nehru Odeh
There is something deeply intriguing about “Freed From Desire”, the smash hit by Italian singer-songwriter Gala Rizzatto, aka Gala. Released in 1996, it has broken records not just in sports stadia and on football pitches in the ongoing 2026 World Cup, but also in bars, restaurants, dance halls, music circuits, as well as in the hearts and minds of fans across the globe.
The melody floats into the warm summer air like a hymn. It spills from stadiums into streets. It echoes through pubs in London, cafés in Lagos, bars in Buenos Aires, and living rooms in Tokyo. It follows thunderous headers, breathtaking saves, and last-minute winners. It accompanies ecstasy and heartbreak, triumph and despair. It has become as much a part of the 2026 FIFA World Cup as football itself.
Everywhere you go, it’s entrancing chorus na na na na na na na na na na reverberates, breaking walls and barriers – gender, racial, class, and age – and uniting everyone in a frenzy in whose company prison walls are broken and everyone finds freedom, release, and loses themselves, as Lionel Richie sings in his 1983 hit, in wild romance.
Fans sing it, music lovers mime it, and dance to its rhythm. And not only has it sold millions, it has also climbed charts across continents and become one of the defining songs of not just the Eurodance era but also the ongoing 2026 World Cup.
And not only that, on its release in 1996, nightclubs embraced it, football terraces adopted it, Olympic crowds sang it, political protesters borrowed it, students marched to it, champions celebrated with it. Just as the title connotes, it inspired a certain of freedom not just from desire but from everything.
Yet the song is a paradox. Its genius lies in its deceptive simplicity, in its oxymoronic outcomes. The more it frees fans from desire, stretches their imaginations, puts them in a state of Buddhist nirvana and enriches their lives, the more it impoverishes Gala, thus imprisoning her in a Kafkaesque labyrinth she has been trying to free herself from for three decades.
Instead of smiling to the banks, given the millions of copies the single has sold, Gala is poorer for it, fighting for justice and chasing shadows for the past 30 years. Despite the worldwide success of her hit and the anthem’s renewed ubiquity in the 2020s, Gala has been unable to reap the financial rewards of her song and its renewed success.
While millions dance to its infectious rhythm, the woman behind it has spent years fighting a battle of an entirely different kind—not against defenders or goalkeepers, but against contracts, copyrights and the unforgiving machinery of the music business.
Life rarely writes tragedies with such exquisite irony. A song about freedom became its creator’s prison. A song that has generated fortunes around the world became a reminder of the fortune that slipped through her fingers. Sometimes reality composes poetry more cruelly than poets ever could.
Ironically, Gala has been living “penniless in Brooklyn, New York, with friends in rented rooms. No thanks to “a very unfair deal” and a lopsided contract she signed with an unscrupulous producer named Max Moroldo.
When Gala met Moroldo in 1995 at 20, she knew nothing about copyright, royalties, and other musical property rights. She was in it for the music. Like many young musicians seduced by dreams of stardom, Gala signed a recording agreement long before she fully understood the legal implications hidden within its pages. Only years later did she realise what she had surrendered.
As the anthem generated enormous revenues through streaming, broadcasting, licensing and sporting events, she repeatedly revealed that she received only a fraction of the wealth her creation continued to produce. The anthem became richer than the artist.
Gala has spoken candidly about entering the industry with little understanding of publishing rights, master ownership and royalty structures. “I signed an outrageously unfair contract (…) I wasn’t stupid; I was ignorant,” Gala shared. “But also, things were going on behind my back that I didn’t know about,” she revealed.
She also shared how she has been living “penniless in Brooklyn with friends in rented rooms” for four years now and that the situation is “quite difficult.” And her life has become a reversal of fortune. “People think I’m drinking a Martini on a Caribbean island and that I’m a billionaire because of my song, but it’s not the case. I don’t have the money to buy a flat. I live like a nomad. In the last six weeks, I’ve changed addresses four times!”
She confessed that it has taken her a long time to talk about her current situation and that when she sees “thousands of remixes being cut and put out, where I don’t have a say, it’s terrible. And it’s your name. And Gala is not my artist name – Gala is my name.”
The song itself is an irony. While it has enabled millions to free themselves from desire and enter a state of euphoric Buddhist Nirvana across the globe, it has left the singer in tatters. Gala may be tired, as she always says, but she has not given up and is still fighting to recover the rights to her hit.
“For almost 30 years, I’ve been living like an independent artist,” she says. “I never relaxed, I never sat down, I realised that I had to roll up my sleeves and get to work…”
Still, a meeting in November 2023 with Ben Mawson, co-founder of TaP Music, started another tug-of-war with Morolso. This resulted in Gala winning the right to re-record her iconic song, taking it back and hopefully managing to reap some of the rewards.
The 50-year-old artiste still has a long way to go. The next time you’re singing along to ‘Freed From Desire’ – and hopefully getting the correct number of ‘na-na’s right – spare a thought for the singer who’s still trying to make it her own again.
