Anime Parallele and Almas Paralelas (English: Parallel Souls) are the fifteenth studio albums by Italian singer Laura Pausini, released on 27 October 2023 by Warner Music and Atlantic Records.^[1] The album is primarily in Italian and Spanish, but it also contains parts in Portuguese.^[2]

After releasing her fourteenth studio album Fatti sentire in 2018, Pausini embarked on the Fatti Sentire World Tour 2018 between Europe, the United States and Latin America. In 2019 she released the greatest hists The Singles Collection and set out on the 2019 Laura Biagio Stadi Tour in Italy with Biagio Antonacci. After the conclusion of the tour, the singer announced a recording pause of at least two years.^[3]

On October 23, 2020, she publishes the first original song "Io sì (Seen)", a soundtrack to the film The Life Ahead directed by Edoardo Ponti,^[4] becoming the first non-English-language song to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and become the first song written in Italian to be nominated at the Academy Award for Best Original Song.^[5][6] Between 2020 and 2022 Pausini had started recording and composing her fourteenth studio album. In 2022, she published the Italian and Spanish language song "Scatola / Caja", as the soundtrack to the documentary film about the singer life and career Laura Pausini – Piacere di conoscerti directed by Ivan Cotroneo and Monica Rametta for Prime Video.^[7]

In August 2023 Pausini announced through her social networks that she had finished her fourteenth studio album, writing, "Today, after 3 years, I can say that I have finally finished singing my new record."^[8]

During a press conference for the album, Pausini said the project was started during the COVID-19 pandemic,^[9] and features in the lyrics "stories I have lived or been told" and "to put love, respect for people and human beings back at the center."^[10][11] The singer further stated:^[12]

The pandemic forced us to listen to our own thoughts and questions, until we came back to life, without being who we were before, we all became 'parallel souls,' homogenized out of fear of being excluded, even more distant from each other, with fewer points of reference and meeting. I asked myself how I wanted to survive this new reality by coping with it. I haven't found all the answers but I keep looking for them. And in this process I realized that the only way was to start looking at ourselves from the outside, as if my eyes were above me. I put individuality and its right to be respected at the center. And thus was born the thread that binds the tracks on my album

The project is composed of sixteen tracks in the original version and twenty-two in the deluxe version, written and composed by Pausini with numerous songwriters and composers, including Biagio Antonacci, Federica Abbate, Michele Bravi, Alessandro Raina, Davide Simonetta, Dario Faini, Virginio and Cheope. Production was entrusted to Michelangelo, Paolo Carta, Simon Says! and Francesco "Katoo" Cattiti.^[13] The singer reported on the production process of the tracks of the work of joining the arrangements to the artist's voice:^[14]

On this record in particular I use falsettos a lot more, which has always cost me trouble to use, because I have a very strong natural voice. At this moment in history, the powerful voice does not work very much, and for me to sing with half-voice is so easy that I feel useless. On the other hand, it was not easy to manage my voice with the new arrangements: I myself called in young, new producers to make sure that my melodies, which I didn't want to abandon, married authentically with the contemporary arrangements that these young producers brought to the record. Sometimes I completely covered the drums with the volume of the vocals, so we had to find a musical square

The singer also explained the decision to include the voice of her daughter Paola in the track "Dimora naturale":^[15]

Paola came into my studio at night and heard the song dedicated to her. She asked to sing it with me. She took my hand and knew the melody right away. She also added answers, I played it to Jacopo Pesce and we decided to put it in like that. I'm worried about her being a singer, but in this case I couldn't avoid making the truth in our love felt

Alessandro Alicandri of TV Sorrisi e Canzoni described the project as "intense and varied in content," noting that it evinces "the desire to leave nothing to chance, to always remember how important attention to detail and renewal is," and "the love of the community of parallel souls who walk alongside her even though they live in different lives." The journalist was impressed by the writers and producers involved in the project, reporting that the production of the songs "comes across as very compact, clear, and very true to Laura Pausini's identity."^[16]

Paolo Panzeri of Rockol affirmed that the album presents "an unquestionable formal perfection" that "confirm[s] her status as the queen of Italian pop and that of a Latin music star," appreciating the collaborations in songwriting. Panzeri stressed that the singer "restrains the power of her voice" in the songs, "going rather for more restrained singing, and that is not a bad thing."^[17]

Billboard reanked the album as one of the "25 Best Latin Albums of 2023", describing it as a "passionate journey" and a "a pop gem that made us dance and laugh, reflect, and heal" with sounds from "energetic pop-dance/electronic song" to "sensitive piano love ballad".^[18]