Matt Maltese

“Often just so much of what I want to do is make the ordinary a bit more mythical, because I see it like that.”

Scrolling down your TikTok for-you page in 2021, you could have seen As the world caves in trending. It was and still remains a gut-wrenching song. It has as protagonists Theresa May (the UK Prime Minister at the time the song was released) and Donald Trump (the US President at the time the song was released), enduring a night of romance before an atomic warfare. The lyrics were not as important as the musicality and the insane crescendo it has at the end, for which the artist almost screams the words in such a tonality that makes your heart even skip a beat.

Those, like me, who were most amazed by that song then discovered Matt Maltese listening to his debut album, Bad Contestant. The album conveys such a strong combination of melancholia and humor. Above all, songs like Strange Time or Like a Fish are meant as an anthem of self-loathing and a confession of self-hate. His ironic, romantic, but rather sad world appears in front of our eyes and easily makes us feel like one of its residents.

When Krystal, Matt Maltese’s second album, first came out, it presented to me at the right time and in the right place. After coming back from an exchange year in the US to my small town, I remember how loud the lyrics of Curl up & Die or Wish You’d Ask Me were speaking to me, and their melodies created an even more ineffable experience.

When I almost forgot Matt Maltese’s name, suddenly, then, I had the chance to discover his third album, Good Morning It’s Now Tomorrow, and every song started to perfectly link to moments in my everyday life. Everyone Adores You (at least I do) and Krakow, for instance, are so intimate and so passionate that listening to them will always be heart-warming. You Deserve an Oscar, then, really depicts the people around us, the ones we look up to as they silently carry us on when the world appears too heavy.

In 2023, Driving Just To Drive came out, continuing his project and my devotion, following the path that was created by the predecessors. Songs like Mother or Coward encapsulate the soul of the album, a sincere conversation about past relationships and how they have and still are affecting the present. Sure, don’t miss out on Museum together with its video clip, highlighting how difficult it is to look back at past lives and how hard it is to see them objectively without falling back into them.

His final work of 2024 is entitled Songs That Aren’t Mine, one of my favorite projects ever, which decides to explore another point of view of some of the greatest successes of all time, accompanied by exceptional features. Probably you can’t imagine a different version of Complicated or Kiss Me, by now stamped in our brains, but Matt Maltese is able to reinvent them in an even more passionate way. Listen to all of them and you probably will not be so sure anymore whether Sinéad O’Connor or he is better in Nothing Compares 2 U (at least I don’t even know anymore).

After all this journey into Maltese’s music, you are now ready (or almost ready) to bear the strong emotions of his concerts. He will play on the 11th December at the Legend Club in Milan and you will probably see us covered in tears!