20 years of TRL, which united young people with music: do you remember that?

In a distant era in which channel 8 was still called MTV, in which music was broadcast 24 hours a day and not one reality show after another, in this era now forgotten by most there was a program that marked the midweek afternoons of us adolescents at the beginning of the millennium: TRL (total request live).

Aired from November 1, 1999 to September 24, 2010, TRL was a fixture after school, a moment of pause before falling asleep on books and pretending to do homework. Today's teenagers, equipped with 24-hour internet and smartphones always in hand, cannot understand the thrill of seeing their favorite singer in the weekly Top Ten. Not to mention all the refills sold out by sending sms to vote for our favorite song.

Several conductors have alternated over the years: Marco Maccarini, Giorgia Surina, Alessandro Cattelan, Federico Russo, Carolina Di Domenico, Elena Santarelli, Carlo Pastore and Elisabetta Canalis. The success of the format was undoubtedly also due to the great guests, national and international, who performed during the program. Absolute Zero, Different Twins, Lunapop, but also Britney Spears, Mariah Carey and Green Day.

Before traveling up and down Italy, TRL's historic location was in Milan, at the Fiorucci space in Piazza San Babila. Piazza that daily was crowded with people in raptures with more creative posters every day and the hope of being invited to go to the studio. What if it rained? No problem, open umbrella and the usual charge.

The announcement of the closure was a shock for all of us. I haven't fully metabolized it yet. It was not just a musical program, but a means capable of entertaining and bringing young people closer to music, to their idols, to find contact with singers and conductors, as if we were all a big family. And now that years have passed since the last episode, years in which we grew up and the drama of adulthood has taken over the light-heartedness of the time, how nice would it be, even for just one day, to be able to stop the daily frenzy to watch TRL? I know, this is a pipe dream, but I am pretty sure that if a referendum were ever to be held for the return of the program, the yes would win hands down.