“Something (you don’t need)” is the latest single by SOLO—the solo project by Italian musician Giuseppe Galato, singer and guitarist of psychedelic band GianO and punk ‘n’ roll band The Bordello Rock ‘n’ Roll Band.
The melancholic and introspective song, a duet, is a fusion of indie pop, dream-pop, synth-pop, and dance, that ultimately transcends the genres it pulls from.
Following the elektronische musik of “Stati emozionali” and the psychedelia of “Don’t shoot the piano player (it’s all in your head)”, “Something (you don’t need)” showcases further dynamic range in the songwriting from SOLO.
Acoustic guitars and electric guitars, synths, two basses, an e-bow, digitally programmed arpeggiators, and a continuous kick drum, form the framework around SOLO‘s vocal delivery that intertwines with Nobody‘s voice. The result is a dialogue that is intimate, sometimes performed in response, and sometimes working together in harmony
“The song, from the very beginning, was conceived to be sung with two voices, one male and one female. What I was looking for was a subtle voice, sometimes childish, but at the same time adult, sensual: Nobody interpreted the piece perfectly, as I had already imagined it from the moment I performed it alone”
“Something (you don’t need)” stands as a harsh criticism of the social aspect of “keeping up appearances, which pushes us to always have to be aesthetically “perfect”, according to pre-established canons, which involves a gradual loss of individuality, of one’s personality and uniqueness, in favor of an “aesthetic conformity” that makes an individual a copy of the other. This concept is also illustrated on the cover art of the single.
“In the cover art, the mannequin head symbolizes the loss of personality derived from a conformist act, while the parts of the face, hair, eyes, mouth, glued on the impersonal and empty face, represent the unsuccessful attempt to find one’s own personality using parts of the body of others, by external influence and not by one’s own choice, in an attempt to emulate characters erected as a model by society, a society that makes us perceive them as unattainable, just to remind us where our place is; on the background, or on the bottom”.
The video accompanying the song, directed by Alberto Cammarano and performed by Giulia Sarubbi, takes up and underlines the concept.
“A girl, who we never manage to see entirely in the face, puts on makeup before going out in an alienating Milan. As alienating as the big cities are, where the individual gets lost in the crowd and among the skyscrapers, becoming one in the midst of many, a product of the society in which he lives, a cog in a machine that wants us all to be insecure, to then being able to “reassure” us. In the end, we try to be aesthetically “perfect” so as not to feel inadequate to a world that wants to make us feel inadequate; a world that makes us insecure in order to be able to manipulate ourselves more easily and, at the same time, push us to fill that sense of inadequacy through what others have decided can somehow make us satisfied.”
Watch the video for “Something (you don’t need)” below:
Recorded entirely by SOLO at The Bordello Rock ‘n’ Roll Studio and mixed and mastered by Edoardo Di Vietri at the Hexagonlab Recording Studio, “Something (you don’t need)” is the second single, after “Don’t shoot the piano player (it’s all in your head)”, from the forthcoming album “The importance of words (songs of love, anti-capitalism and mental illness)”,
“As an omnivorous listener, I have always appreciated albums where multiple genres coexist with each other; I think of the Beatles’ “White album”, for example. “The importance of words (songs of love, anti-capitalism and mental illness)” will be a very varied album, with songs ranging from psychedelia to art rock through punk, dream pop, shoegaze, grunge, dance.”
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