For You

Album: Matteo (2023)
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Songfacts®:

  • Matteo Bocelli was looking for a particular vibe when he was gathering songs for his 2023 self-titled debut album, and he found it on the lead single "For You," a tune of romantic devotion with a toe-tapping chorus.

    "That's a song I was looking for since the beginning, because I needed a love song that wasn't a ballad, but more an uptempo song," he told Songfacts in a 2023 interview. "Sometimes you listen to a song and you just fall in love with the melody and the lyrics. This one was the case. I was in LA and I demoed the song there. Actually, on the album, what you hear is the demo. I went to the studio and I recorded the song in an hour and we all fell in love. That's why I decided to have it as my first single."
  • Bocelli wrote this with George Tizzard and Rick Parkhouse of the songwriting/production team Red Triangle ("Bigger Than Me"), along with Ryan Johnston and Wayne Hector ("Flying Without Wings," "Feels Like Today").
  • Bocelli is the son of Italian opera singer Andrea Bocelli (his duet partner on the 2018 father/son ballad "Fall On Me"), and the soundtrack of his childhood influenced his own style that melds classical music with pop. He told Songfacts:

    "I was born into a family where we were listening mainly to opera, classical music, and those voices like Sinatra, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, but not very much the rest. My father, he's quite selective in music, he's not very open-minded. But at the same time, I'm from a different generation, so I was listening to Ed Sheeran [who wrote the album's next single, "Chasing Stars"], Queen, Eminem. I like all music when it's well done."
  • In the music video, directed by Giacomo Trulia, Matteo watches a young couple's (Irene Giussani and Edoardo Di Maria) complicated romance unfold at a Milan coffeeshop.
  • Matteo is unlikely to get too specific about the meaning behind his songs because he doesn't want to intrude upon his fans' interpretations.

    "I don't want people to listen to the songs, trying to figure out what's behind them," he told Songfacts. "I'd rather have them take the song, listen to the song, and try to reflect themselves into the music that I make. Because this is the goal. This is why I don't like to talk in detail about my songs."
  • Bocelli embarked on his first headlining concert tour, titled A Night with Matteo, in support of the album, beginning with an intimate show in Berlin, Germany, in September 2023. The previous year, he toured with his father and sister, Virginia, to promote their holiday album, A Family Christmas.

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