B-Side Guys

An old legend claims the human soul weighs twenty-one grams—the weight supposedly lost at the moment of death. Giuseppe Cucè builds an entire album around this measurement, using it as a metaphor for everything immeasurable: emotion, memory, desire, faith, vulnerability. 21 grammi doesn’t attempt to prove or disprove the myth. Instead, the Sicilian singer-songwriter asks what carries that weight while we’re still living, what remains when everything else falls away, whether the soul’s substance can be felt before it departs.

Recorded at TRP Studios in Catania with producer Riccardo Samperi, the album blends Italian cantautorato tradition with soul, orchestral textures, and atmospheric arrangements. The production team assembled reads impressively—the TRP Studio Orchestra led by Giuseppe Furnari, horn section featuring Marcello Leanza on tenor sax and flute, Anthony Panebianco on Hammond organ, backing vocals from Lilla Costarelli and Teresa Raneri. But the arrangements never overwhelm Cucè’s voice, which remains the album’s emotional center. His delivery carries the intimacy of confession, each track feeling like an overheard private thought rather than a public performance.

“È tutto così vero” opens as a visceral confession, the title translating roughly to “It’s all so real.” The track establishes the album’s approach immediately—Cucè doesn’t speak in abstractions but anchors philosophical questions in physical experience. The realness he describes isn’t comfort but confrontation with truth’s weight. The production here introduces the cinematic quality that defines the record, warm acoustic textures meeting subtle electronics to create an expansive yet intimate soundscape.

“Ventuno” serves as the concept track, directly addressing the twenty-one grams. The song doesn’t explain the legend or argue its validity, but instead dwells in the question itself. What does the soul weigh? What carries that weight? Cucè’s vocals navigate between vulnerability and strength, the delivery suggesting someone holding something precious and fragile, aware of both its value and its impermanence.

“Dimmi cosa vuoi” and “Fragile equilibrio” continue building the emotional architecture. “Tell me what you want” becomes a more complicated question than it initially appears—desire revealing character, what we want exposing who we are. “Fragile equilibrium” acknowledges the precarious balance between opposing forces: body and spirit, sensuality and spirituality, light and shadow. The album consistently refuses to choose sides, instead exploring the tension of holding contradictions simultaneously.

“La mia Dea” introduces a devotional quality, the title meaning “my goddess.” But Cucè’s approach to devotion carries earthly weight alongside spiritual dimension. This isn’t abstract worship but specific adoration, grounded in physical reality even as it reaches toward transcendence. The orchestration swells here, the string arrangements adding cinematic scope while Cucè’s voice maintains intimacy. The production by Samperi consistently achieves this balance—large arrangements that never dwarf the human element at the center.

“Cuore d’inverno” translates as “winter heart,” the seasonal metaphor working on multiple levels. Winter brings death to the surface world but also dormancy that enables eventual rebirth. A winter heart might be cold, hardened, protected—or simply waiting for conditions that allow growth. The track demonstrates Cucè’s skill at inhabiting ambiguity, letting images carry multiple meanings without forcing a single interpretation. Claudio Allia’s piano work provides a foundation, the restraint allowing Cucè’s vocal performance to breathe.

“Tutto quello che vuoi” and “Una notte infinita” move toward the album’s emotional peak. “Everything you want” promises totality, while “an infinite night” suggests either dread or possibility depending on perspective. Cucè explores both—the terror of darkness that never ends and the freedom of time that refuses to resolve. The horn arrangements by Marcello Leanza, Nando Sorbello, and the Bella brothers add warmth without sentimentality, the brass grounding the more ethereal elements.

“Di estate non si muore”—”In summer you don’t die”—closes the main album with an assertion that feels both reassuring and uncertain. The statement could be fact, wish, or question. Summer represents life at its fullest, growth, warmth, and abundance. But the negation—you don’t die—raises the question of whether you can die in other seasons, whether mortality respects temporal boundaries. The track ends without resolving this tension, Cucè understanding that some questions serve better than their answers.

The bonus track “El mundo es verdadero” featuring Pandi offers a Spanish version of the opening track, the collaboration expanding the album’s reach while maintaining its core. The world is real, whether articulated in Italian or Spanish, whether experienced in Sicily or elsewhere. The universality of the themes—body and spirit, memory and desire, truth and illusion—transcends language even as specific articulation matters deeply.

Throughout 21 grammi, Cucè builds from the Italian cantautorato tradition while pushing beyond it. The introspective songwriting recalls classic singer-songwriters, but the production’s cinematic scope and the arrangements’ contemporary warmth create something that sounds simultaneously rooted and modern. Energy Mastering’s Pietro Caramelli and Claudio Giussani ensured the final product maintains clarity across the sonic spectrum, the mastering allowing every element—from Alberto Fidone’s bass to Enzo Di Vita’s drums to Gionata Colaprisca’s percussion—to exist in proper space.

The album earned international attention across the USA, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, and Italy for valid reasons. Cucè accomplishes something difficult: creating conceptual work that doesn’t sacrifice emotional immediacy for intellectual coherence. The twenty-one grams concept provides a framework without constraining the songs, each track functioning independently while contributing to the larger journey.

21 grammi documents vulnerability and rebirth, the path from wounds to renewal. Cucè doesn’t offer easy comfort or false resolution. Instead, he inhabits the questions with enough honesty that listeners recognize their own uncertainties reflected back. The weight of the soul might be metaphorical, but the emotional burden Cucè explores across these nine tracks (plus bonus) feels tangibly real. Whether the soul actually weighs twenty-one grams matters less than what we carry while we’re here—the memories, desires, fears, loves, truths that give life its specific gravity. Cucè measures that weight with precision, documenting its burden and its beauty with equal care.