Feathers and Trash

Zucchero’s 2016 song “Turn the World Down” opens with what sounds like a sample of an old blues singer; the sound of a tool beating against metal provides primitive percussion, and that beat is picked up by the rest of the song, as the sample fades out. 

The whole song adopts this earthy, roots approach, with stomping percussion and the urgent, gentle picking of an acoustic guitar driving the music forward. Over time, the sound expands with a string section, but from a distance, like you’re standing outside a concert hall and listening to an orchestra play within. 

For “Turn the World Down,” Elvis Costello provided English lyrics; Zucchero, an Italian singer-songwriter with an international following, composed the music. What’s interesting is that Zucherro recorded a version with the same backing track and his own Italian lyrics, which are not a translation of EC’s lyrics, so it’s effectively two songs with the same melody and instrumentation, but completely different words. 

Zucherro’s version, “Love Again,” strikes a tone of resigned hope (at least, based on the English translation I’m using from Google; if you want me to learn Italian for my own translations of Italian pop songs, I’ll need to introduce a paid tier). Costello’s version isn’t so much in contrast to Zucherro’s as it is a similar story told from the opposite direction. If Zucherro is imploring someone he loves to return to him, then Costello is asking someone he loves to escape with him. The two stories slip past each other in the night. 

The title “Turn the World Down” sets out the breadcrumbs that lead to at least one interpretation; it seems to focus on the ways in which modern society and technologies have placed each of us within a constant cacophony of inputs, ideas and outrages. Or maybe just the outrages, and alongside them, the tragedies; this is a song of exhaustion and frustration, someone tired of being disappointed and shocked by how horrible things have become. 

To “Turn the World Down” suggests that there is a dial somewhere in each of our brains, and that spinning it to just the right setting will give us the mental space to cope with every horror and delight the world serves up to us with a tap of a finger or the click of a mouse. The fact that there isn’t one may be what’s most frustrating to the singer. In the bridge, he lays it all out: 

Here’s where Costello and Zucherro do overlap a bit; this section calls to mind a few lyrical images Zucherro evokes in his own lyric: 

Later he implores someone to “Love again/to erase the ash.” Both writers gravitate toward images of decay even as they profess to write about release–to love again, to turn the world down. It’s almost as if they know deep down that there’s not a song they could write or sing that would really work to clear away “the night again/like black ink pouring from a pen.”