Songfacts®:

• This melodic overture to Patti Smith's 11th studio album, Banga, imagines the voyage of Amerigo Vespucci to the New World in 1497. The New York singer-songwriter explained UK newspaper The Sun why she chose to reference the Italian explorer who gave America its name. "The explorers had this hubris and excitement," she said. "They were going to find the New World and baptise the people. Then they arrived and it was so pure and beautiful that they themselves were transformed. I think of Amerigo as an overture to the album."
• Smith conceived the song on board the ill-fated Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia during a trip she took with her guitarist Lenny Kaye in 2009. The singer-songwriter was asked by French auteur Jean-Luc Godard to appear in his movie Film Socialisme and the film was partly set on the ship that two years later would hit the news headlines after it sank off the coast of Tuscany. The two musicians were scarcely used by Goddard, and spent their time sitting in the sun, reading and sketching out songs. "We went to Egypt, Cyprus and Turkey," remembered Smith to The Sun. "It was quite a cruise despite the fact I had to hear everyone singing 'Volare' all night. We wrote 'Seneca' and formed the ideas for 'Amerigo' during that time.