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521 is five years old. My first ever compilation of songs I ever gave to the world. That’s really weird, but also really cool. In celebration, I thought I’d go back in time, listen to the album, and while doing so write you all a little bit about each of the songs… my remarks and thoughts and such on them after so much time. Yes I’m inspired by Ricky Jamaraz.

Feel free to listen along with me!

1. Without You

Without You is the first song I ever remember writing. It was a song about some unrequited love. I think it suits me right, that the first thing I ever remember writing is a yearning song.

I honestly still like this song a lot, the only thing that really gets me is that “DANCE WITH YOU IN THE POURING RAIN” lol, I had nothing else to put there. I think this song aged well. It also sets the tone of the album in a way I really like. Fun fact about me: I really like when album openings feel like openings, you know what I mean? I feel like this one does that. I love you, Without You.

2. Comes Back Around

Oh, ‘Comes Back Around.’ I wrote this song in a bagel shop near my local public high school shortly after taking the SAT, and I was pissed off at nothing in particular. The test sucked, and I was tired. I cringe at this song regularly, because I KNOW I thought I was cooking and like “YEAHHH THIS IS SO BADASSS” like dude you’re using MIDI horns chill (no diss to MIDI, also shoutout Alex Cass my GOAT for immediately knowing they were MIDI when I showed him this song my freshman year of college).

I think if I re-did this one today, I’d like it a little more. I at least like the scale I used on this. Also those backup vocals were fun. This was my ‘needs more cowbell’ song!

We all have to experiment.

3. Felt the Same

Another 521 song I still unironically love today. I remember showing this song to my friends in school one day, knowing I’d like it a lot. I was still dreaming of this previously mentioned unrequited love idea, and like playing out all the forms of rejection that could happen had I just confessed my feelings, and ‘walking the remnants of all the bridges I’d burned.’

One of my favorite parts of this whole album is the second verse of this song. I also love love love the countermelody in the last part of this song. It’s like the only time I’ve ever done that. Felt the Same is the GOAT.

4. Who You Are

Sigh… This is a love song. A tacky, cliche love song. I don’t have much more to say on this one. I liked it when I wrote it, I don’t as much nowadays. Holy Disney Channel Original. The only thing this song has going for it is being in D Major, probably my favorite key (fun fact!).

5. Apologize

APOLOGIZE THE GOAT. I love this song as well. I think it’s an interesting one nowadays, because in vague terms I was apologizing for something I should not have been apologizing for. That puts such a neat spin on this song, listening to it through that lens.

Outside of that though, this song originally didn’t have a bridge and when I decided to add one and then the harmonies I freaked the fuck out in a good way. I love this song in so many ways. This was one of the experiments that worked.

6. I Love You!

This song is the most popular one on the album, getting ever closer to 1,000 streams. I wrote this during COVID school, bored out of my mind, with my school ChromeBook on an online browser drag-and-drop chord arpeggiator. I guess it goes to show that the thing you put the most effort into isn’t necessarily always going to be the most popular one. It’s a silly little happy song, and I like it for that. But…

7. Lose Your Mind

Oh, beautiful crashout song o’mine. My favorite thing when arranging this tracklist was deciding where this song should go, and I chose to have it right after the happiest song on the album. It felt fitting, considering the emotional highs and lows I had been feeling so back-and-forth-like in the months that I wrote this album.

This song I wrote at my lowest. At least, my lowest at the time. This song to me, solidifies what my sound would grow into. This is my current songwriting in its infancy. I’d call the Luca sound progression™:

Lose Your Mind → Alone Again → Pretend → Kiss and Tell

But it all starts with this defining song. I still love this song, I still relate to this song. I love you, ‘Lose Your Mind.’

8. I’ll Be There

The calm after the storm. This song reads like a love song, but I actually started writing this when my friend was in the hospital. I guess platonic love is still a form of love. I felt powerless and horrible for this person I cared so much for. I did what I could.

The second verse of this song is a generic love song. I hate that I didn’t finish this song the way I started it.

Fun fact: This was supposed to be a guitar song, but in-studio I couldn’t get my fingers to play the part right, so I did it on piano on the spot. Neat!

9. The One Who Got Away

This song is fun. This is me coping with a breakup in real time. This song is fun. Yes I said that twice. You can hear all the denial in my lyrics, and I think that’s so funny in hindsight. I ended up being okay. I wish I could tell the insecure me writing this that he really didn’t need to worry. He wouldn’t’ve believed me, but that’s besides the point.

“THE ONE… WHO… GOOOOOT AWAY, HEY!”

10. I Can’t Be The One

My doom and despair song. The moment you know you’re not meant for something. The moment you’re talking about something you already knew about, but hadn’t said. The moment you know you’re not meant for someone. The part where you do the hard thing and throw the towel in because you truly believe it’d be better for everyone involved. I still love this song so much, and it still evokes the emotions in me that I felt writing it.

My most honest lyricism to date. This song comes from me noodling down on an emotionally numb day, like many emotionally numb days sequentially before it. Suddenly, I wrote lyrics and emotions flooded out of me. Hey, that’s where they were. Neat!

The end of this song almost… haunts me? Those ohhhh woahhhhss in the background still live in my head. They feel like something I can’t describe. Thanks past me for eternalizing this. I will use those ohhhh woahhhhss again.

“there are things I know for certain… and God above I’m sure this isn’t one…”

11. Valerie

Valerie deserved an album.

This song means so much to me also, and is about a love I didn’t have but dreamt about. I was walking through Binghamton in full nice weather swing, couples everywhere. Bowling, at the cafe, you name it. It made me think of what I could have with somebody someday…

It’s also my most popular song, and I think for good reason. I don’t write like this often, it’s a fun change and I do really think it’s some of my best writing ever. I love you, Valerie!

12. Back In The Day

From hereon are songs I didn’t release, that I wrote a long time ago. I felt like they belonged to a different time, and the deluxe album was a great place for it. This is one of those.

This song has to do with somebody I had met and flirted with for a short while my freshman year of college, who ended up disappearing out of nowhere… and reappearing with a boyfriend.

It was about not being really sure about the whole ordeal. It was a strange time for me, and there’s a lot of insecurity in the lyrics. Oh, Luca. Somebody hug 18-year-old me please... no, not you.

13. Rose-Flavored Tea

Prometheus (Spotify) brought me fire (Laufey). This is a sappy Laufey-style love song about a random infatuation from my college years. I do still really like the “feelings that aren’t the same, and you are the one that I blame, but I’m never one to complain, dear, complain to you…” line. But why wouldn’t I say rose petal tea? Rose FLAVOR tea? I don’t know something about that doesn’t sound right to me anymore. PETAL WAS THE SAME NUMBER OF SYLLABLES AND IT MADE MORE SENSE. Oh well. If you’re reading this, hi, Laufey!

14. I’m Not Funny

We. All. Had. To. Experiment. I don’t remember what prompted this one. It was really fun, but I also totally thought I was The Guy™ which is hilarious. I was lonely in school, and chasing friendship and love and all that… and I didn’t like the caricature of myself I was at the time. I wasn’t funny. Nothing about it was. It was just kinda… sad. Wait write that down-

15. Walls

I wrote this song during my senior year of high school. It was the first post-COVID year and there were these stupid divider walls up everywhere. I had no classes with my friends because we were all separated as a COVID precaution. My friends were on the other side of the wall. I hated everything about this situation. Walls was born.

16. Nemesis

Nemesis. (takes long drag of cigar) I hated this song. Confession #aired, I really just kinda hated Nemesis. But I have a close group of friends who love it. Who have wanted it more than anything ever in the history of existence and the world. I learned to like Nemesis again, and even wrote a second verse for it. It’s out into the world now, for better or worse. Enjoy, papas fritas.

17. Who You Are - 2020

I love that I have this relic of a recording still. It’s embarrassing, and the drums sound SO BAD. It’s not much better in the new one but God Almighty anything beats the abomination that this was. I remember posting this to my fucking private snapchat story like #ComingSoon! Dude.

18. Lose Your Mind - 2020

This song was so much worse before it was what it is now. “Seventeen years ago when I was MADE?!” WHAT WERE YOU DOING WHO GAVE YOU A PEN? Also it drags out for like two to five business years and the disembodied voice in the end is more washed out than the porch my Nonno (rest in peace) used to hose down every weekend. I am so glad I made this song better. No shade to the old one.

19. Walls - 2021

I don’t have much more to say on this song than I already did, but I wanted to include this as a little archive. That’s all! Oh also wait I’m being SO deadass right now: these old versions of the songs I did before I had a microphone or anything so fun fact I made these using the following as a microphone:

That is like my favorite part about these old songs and I don’t know how I forgot to mention that until right now. LITERAL HEADSET RECORDINGS LMAO.

20. Without You - 2019

The first recording of the first song I ever wrote. I cry listening to this and thinking about how long it’s been. I cry listening to this and thinking about how far I’ve come since then. Not just in the world of making music, but like in my life. I’m such a different person than the dude who recorded this voice memo in his house trying to impress a girl or yearn or something.

For what it’s worth though, I’m so happy that I made the decision to pick up the guitar and try writing something. That I stuck to it, that it got me to where it has because I don’t think I’d be the same person I am today if I didn’t take that leap the way I did.

I still have a lot to learn from the person who hit record that day. I have to channel some of that again and bring you guys some new stuff. In some ways, that Luca is braver than I am today. Respect to him.

This album literally wouldn’t have happened the way that it did without Nick Gardino of New Royalty Records. He encouraged me to “do a good job” each time we sat down and recorded, even when I was sick, and to this day I think I did. He was also so chill when we recoreded Technicolor Daydream and our drummer broke his kick pedal. That's one for the books.

I also must thank all the wonderful people who listen to my crazy songs and maybe even enjoy them. There are 70 wonderful monthly listeners on my Spotify and many more that I can’t count. Y’all are awesome.

More soon. Cya!

~Luca