Daily Discovery: Nicolosi, "Simple Now"

Videos by American Songwriter

SONG: “Simple Now”

HOMETOWN: Chicago, Illinois

CURRENT LOCATION: Los Angeles, California

AMBITIONS: To roam the Earth, learning as much as I can.

TURN-OFFS: Negativity, overly-practical-people, living in fear, naysayers, fake food, fake conversation, liars, the legal system, and funnel cake.

TURN-ONS: Believers, do-ers, dreamers,

FAVORITE LYRIC: “And now after some thinking, I’d say I’d rather be/A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me…”

SONG I WISH I WROTE: “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay. This song is conceptually incredible to me. It felt like Chris Martin drew lyrical inspiration from the life of Napoleon Bonaparte.

5 PEOPLE I’D MOST LIKE TO HAVE DINNER WITH: Plato, Nostradamus, Kanye West, Hermes, Wim Hof

MY FAVORITE CONCERT EXPERIENCE: Gonna have to give props to good ol’ Coldplay again… 2009 Viva La Vida tour, Alpine Valley.

I WROTE THIS SONG BECAUSE… I needed to get out of the whole LA music-world for a second – it can really start to mess with your head – so I spent a month out in Oregon. I stayed in this cool condo overlooking the river and just wrote exactly what I felt and recorded it on the spot. “Simple Now” was actually the first song I did there. I used to use a lot of super-produced electronic sounds in my music and it was finally time to return to my organic roots. The song has a dual meaning – I was feeling proud of the US because gay marriage had just passed, so it’s kind of about that. But beyond that, I believe humans have a tendency to complicate our own existence. We create all the rules, walls, and constructs based in fear. Eventually these constructs crumble and what’s left is simple – love.