Can’t Take My Eyes Off You

I’ve been on a streak of consuming stories of the vibrant Italian-American diaspora over the past few weeks. First it was Martin Scorcese’s The Irishman on Netflix set in the world of the Italian-American mafia, then the off-broadway show Romeo and Bernadette directed by Justin Ross Cohen, also set in the mafia world but with a comedic spin and tone of levity. After the latter, I was inspired to post my remix of a classic Bollywood song based on the Italian Tarantella Napoletana. Last weekend I caught the Broadway musical Jersey Boys, the story of the rise of the the rock and pop band known as the Four Seasons. The show was lush with the catchy pop sound of the 1960s and 1970s charting the narratives of band members Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito, and Nick Massi, four Italian-Americans from New Jersey. The popular show has been running since 2005 and was turned into a film directed by Clint Eastwood. The top notch vocals you expect from a Broadway show kept me highly engaged and every time one song ended I couldn’t wait for the next. Then I heard the line “You’re just too good to be true…” and I found myself in that moment of epiphany when you hear a timeless song but just found out whose it is. I turned to my wife and whispered with excitement “I didn’t know this was their song!” (Upon further research it was technically released as a single by Frankie Valli and written by Bob Crew and Bob Gaudio.) As the song unfolded, I started imagining strands of Indian classical phrases weaving together each line, as if the spaces between each line had always left open the possibility of an Indian raga (scale) to come alive. After the show was done I couldn’t stop hearing that blend of music in my mind and felt compelled to record the idea. Another song that has recently been on repeat in my head “xanny" by Billie Eilish, and in recording this track, I took a cue from the way the baseline and the lyrics in that song play together, leaving a similar space between each line as in Frank Valli’s song. The night after I saw the show, I mixed all the inspiration together to create this rendition of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You”.