This is the last song on the record and also the last song that I wrote for this album. It came to me when spring arrived last March. I had just moved house and was having a crisis cause everything I knew was being overturned. I also lost many loved ones during the last year and a half, so I've been feeling very bad and needed to comfort me and my family. I wrote this song for all the people I love: my relatives, my friends, and one day I'll also dedicate it to my lover and my children. At some point I was talking to myself too. I needed to hear those words so I wrote them for myself firstly. Then I realized that it can be about everyone you love. This is a song that you need to hear when you feel like you can't take it anymore and want to give up, so that you can find a reason to go on with your life. We all have at least one reason to carry on. For some it's music, for others it's a particular activity, sport, job, hobby, passion. Maybe your reason could be a certain person or a place that you love. Or even the hope that one day things will get better. What matters is that everybody has one. It is one of my favorite songs that I've ever written, including the ones that I haven't published yet. I was so happy when I finished it cause it completed the tracklist. It was like a ray of sun in the middle of a rainstorm that created a rainbow.

Nightworker

Heal You Right

Live for Yourself is a song that defends love, in all of its shapes. I wrote it for all the people who are discriminated for who they love, for all the people who are marginalized because of their skin color, for all the people who feel like they are treated differently. My dream is that someday we'll destroy all the walls and stop building new ones. I know a lot of people who desperately try to be themselves but they can't because they are ashamed of themselves first, and then they're afraid of other people's judgment. I will never understand what the fuck people have against homosexuality or why they have to justify their stupid ideas with religion. If Jesus, or any other religious figure, was alive today, he would despise homophobes. I'm pretty sure of that, as Christianity as well as many other religions are based on mutual love and respect and on not treating others the way you wouldn't want to be treated. In the song I mention that we'll get the law against homophobia. In my country, which is Italy, a year ago a law that would have condemned discrimination based on sexual orientation, sex and gender identity was rejected. That made me so angry and furious against Italian politics that I wrote two songs thinking about that. One of them is Live for Yourself, the other is Shame on You. So, for me Live for Yourself is the third and last political song. I just want to say to everyone, defend someone who needs help and don't let anyone push you around because of who you are. Talking about the sonic experience of listening to the song, I cared about making this album in general more enjoyable with headphones. This song in particular sounds very big and cheerful and has a lot of cool headphones-only tricks, similarly to the whole record. It is the second-to-last track as I wanted to give the album a hopeful ending with Live for Yourself and Heal You Right. I'm so proud of this song and I hope that people will love it as much as I do.

Live for Yourself

Keep It All Inside is the most techno-sounding track on the album. It's one of the last tracks that I wrote. I began working on it on my laptop a few days before my birthday in a time of my life when I was very upset and hurt inside. The song is about my tendency to try to keep bad emotions like anger, sadness and frustration inside me as long as I can. Inevitably, like everyone who keeps it all inside, you arrive at a point where you explode in a volcanic eruption of anger that makes you very irascible. So, in this song I address all the times that I have felt pushed around. It is literally a fuck-off to all the people who held me from expressing myself and who tried to limit my freedom. It's like that point on the album where I am no longer subject to what other people want for me, only thinking from now on to what I want for me. At first, the words that came to my mind while singing to it were: "I did it for the money, oooh". It made me cringe so much that I knew that I had to change it. The real lyrics came out a few days later and the song was completed last February. There's a mantra that is heard in the beginning and in the end of the song that says "looking for the sun". That phrase has been my motto for the last two years so I decided to put it in the song.

Keep It All Inside

Who Am I is the oldest song I ever released. It was first written in May 2017 when I was 13. I originally wrote it because of my feeling of inadequacy seeing my male friends, who were all skinny and fit and considered sexy, while I thought that I was ugly, fat and unsexy. It remained in a drawer for many years, then last year I decided to take it, slightly change some of the lyrics (but 90% of the original lyrics are in the final version) and I made an instrumental for it. I was sad when I realized that after 4 years I was still feeling the same way. The song talks in detail about all of the things I don't like about myself. Physically mostly. I've always thought that I am too fat, that my tummy is too big, that I'm not sexy enough. And in my life I've always had big variations of weight. I went from having a normal weight in my early years, to being very overweight when I was in primary school. Then when I became a teenager my weight decreased to the point where I was very skinny and almost underweight because I had big anxiety issues that kept me from eating, other than having a broken heart which is a thing that makes you not hungry. 2 years ago I got back a lot of pounds and then this year I lost weight again. There were times when I would starve if I thought that I was too overweight and, like, not eat. Other than the fact that I've always thought that I'm so uninteresting and boring and that people don't want to hang out with me. So all these sad, discomforting aspects of my life that are in the lyrics are backed by what? A house track LOL. Cause why not.

Who Am I

Nightly Relief describes the feeling of peace and solace that one can only feel at night. It was written during a moment in my life when I felt that the world was a scary place and I was very sick of watching TV as all I could hear was bad news. Instead, during the night there was silence, relaxation, relief, no anxiety, no fear. I used to go for walks at midnight and it was so fulfilling. Most of this album was written or even recorded in the middle of the night, this is why the sound and the aesthetics of this era are so nocturnal. Many of the album lyrics as well come from conversations that I had with myself during those walks, when I would just stare at the trees and at the night sky and sometimes I would dance in the rain, especially when it was either spring or autumn. I was scared of what was happening in my life and in the world at that time, but then the night would arrive and I'd go to my bed in the dark at 2 am and I could listen to music without having to deal with rude people. This song, and specifically the bridge, is the turning point of the whole record. It's where the fears begin to fade and you can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The last 4 songs in fact are about liberation from fears and anger, and no longer on contemplating sadness. The sonic texture of this song is also different from the preceding tracks as it eschews the harsh sound of the previous 3 songs and moves in a more chill-out direction.

Nightly Relief

If I were to explain what The Psychologist is about, I wouldn't know. The piano melody that is in the bridge has tormented me for years. It was 2019 when it first came to my mind. I recorded a short piece of it on my phone but I thought it would have been forgotten. Instead, when I was producing my first album, it just came back in my mind and I tried to record an early demo of a song called "Apology", which is the first version of The Psychologist that features a different arrangement and different lyrics. I never intended to release it but I needed to try to create a song with that melody. I thought that it would finally set me free from it. Then, a month before releasing my first album, I kept thinking about that piece of music and I was writing new parts of it on my keyboard. At that point I knew that it would not let me go. The following autumn I just kept playing that melody on my piano obsessively trying to write something to it. I had to wait until March 2021 to finally write the lyrics. They came like a stream of consciousness, so quickly and effortlessly that I believe that I was just a bridge for something that came from somewhere else. So, no, I have no idea about what this song is about. It's so mystical and mysterious to me. I tried to give it some meaning, as it references religion and sex and psychology. It feels to me that different parts of the song tell a different story. In my mind, the first verse is about temptation and religion and the whole concept of the snake that made Adam and Eve lose their purity. The second verse is about the relationship between parents and children or also between humans and God, as it addresses authoritative figures. The bridge is about virginity and longing until you find the right person to have sex with for the first time. The 3 refrains instead are about relationships between human beings and about how trust is hard to get. But everyone will give their own interpretation of this song. It's one of my favorite tracks on the record and also it's one the songs that sounded more contemporary and synth-pop-ish. I just liked putting layers of synths on it, as the song progressed. It starts very sparse and more drum-and-bass inspired and then it ends as a big explosion of keyboards and falsetto vocals. The bass is very loud and important too. It's one of my favorite songs I've ever written.

The Psychologist

Drugstore is the first song I've fully written and recorded for this album in January 2021. I sang the first take of the vocals in February 2021 but I wasn't satisfied with the result. I tried to re-record it multiple times but I never liked it completely. I also changed some of the original lyrics. Still, even after trying different melodies and vocal arrangements I couldn't finish it. It wasn't until last September when I wrapped up work on the album and finished recording it that I have finally gotten a vocal take that I liked. It is the most difficult song vocally. It goes very low in the verses and very high in the chorus. It gave me hell to learn to sing it. The instrumental track and the song itself instead was very easy to write. I wrote it in a few days in the first week of 2021 when I was just leaving a toxic friendship that lasted years and years and contributed to my state of depression and drug use. The song, in fact, has a double meaning. The first meaning is that it is about when I was a stoner and spent all my nights smoking weed on my rooftop, and describes the feeling of running to a secret place at late night where you're alone to smoke grass. As the song progresses, the drug abuse theme becomes more prominent and weed goes from being the solution to your problems to being your problem. Smoking a joint once in a while is cool and can be very fun, but smoking tons of weed every week just makes you a complete mess. And this is where the second meaning comes. Some friendships start off very intimate and true and you think you've found your best friend for life. But then after many years your friend changes to the point where you don't recognize that person anymore. It all has become toxic and dangerous for you. And it breaks your heart, but you gotta leave that fake friend. The theme of comparing toxic people with drugs is found often in this record. It's a truly vulnerable song, even if it sounds very hardcore techno.

Drugstore

I think Do You Treat Me Like That? is one of the saddest songs I've ever written. It's not really a Nightworker outtake, I wrote it on an October night a few months ago, when Nightworker was already fully recorded. I felt like I needed to put it out into the world as soon as I could, so here it is. It was one of the most painful songs to write in my whole life, really, but it was written very quickly, it took just a few hours. The narrative of the song is something that I think many people had to go through. It's about when someone you're in love with plays with your feelings and often changes his attitude towards you. One day that guy is cute and sweet and nice to you, then the following day he's cold, arrogant and he ignores you. And it makes you feel so bad, because in the beginning everything is fine and he's just perfect and he treats you very well and gives you the feeling that he loves you back. Then as time goes on and you start getting more honest about what you feel, he takes a few steps back, maybe because he's scared, maybe because he was never serious and just wanted to play with your feelings. You just arrive at the point after a while where you give up and say "I can't go on like this". It's better for your mental health to step away from that toxic person and just stay on your own until you find the right one, I believe that one day we'll all find the love of our life. I'm happy that I wrote this song as it marked the moment I realized that I had to make things clear and if he didn't really want me then I'll just leave. And I'm happy that I left him, at least I no longer feel manipulated or emotionally abused, even though it hurt me so much that I spent a week in total sadness after that. But now I'm feeling better. The sound of this song is very minimalistic. It's just keyboard, bass, drum machine and some sparse piano and guitar parts. I didn't want to over-produce it, I wanted it to stay very true.

Dope Rush

Do You Treat Me Like That?

This started as an experiment. I wanted to bring out the rock side in this song and I liked the result, so I released it. The original is still better though, but I like this version a lot.

Dope Rush (Rock Version)

This is the radio edit version of Dope Rush. It was a pain to cut the electric guitar outro but I had to shorten it or it wouldn't be suitable for radio. I'm not even currently getting airplay but I still hope that one day I will LOL. At least this time I managed to cut it under 4 minutes. The Everyone Like Me radio edit was 5:10 long, it didn't make much sense, I know. This one's cool though. And I may use it for the video, I don't know yet.

Dope Rush (Radio Edit)

Gio is an Italian singer and songwriter. He was born in Naples on December 10th, 2003.

Gio

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