Soul for the 2020s, ‘Goodbye’ overlays post-Vaporwave elevator music with pin-sharp vocals to inspire three minutes of nostalgia for a relationship you never had.
Singer songwriter Alessandro Panzeri hails from Naples, but his music is elsewhere, at least in spirit. It’s about Naples, he says: “The city where I was born and raised and left as an adult. It tells of when I come back to visit and I feel as if nothing changes even if time passes. It is a melancholy song that speaks of leaving the past behind and living the present.” Same city, different sunset. Or, maybe, different city, same sunset.
The mood is soft and hopeful, accepting of change but mournful for a past that can no longer be. Delicate jazz gives the track an unthreatening vibe: it can settle on the idea that ‘this is just how things are now’. Stylistically, the song takes one important step away from the trends of contemporary Italian indie music, instead Americanising into ‘The Other’. It’s that feeling you get when you live away from home for too long and then realise that wherever you are, there’s something that doesn’t quite fit in anymore.
‘Goodbye’ is a pastel-coloured dirge, a flick through old photos of a place lost in time. There isn’t much reason to feel better about life, only that it’s the mature thing to do. Minimalist and well composed, the song has grown up, found a job in the city and made friends with life, only occasionally thinking back to how simple things used to be.
Words by James Reynolds