Following the release of his debut solo album, ‘SIVE’, in June, Michele Ducci, former member of dance-pop duo M+A and and Hip Hop duo Santii, returned to the studio to tape some new live recordings of alternative versions of several tracks from ‘SIVE’ plus a few new songs, including new single ‘It’s Hard to be Easily Loved’.

The single is out now, accompanied by a video of Ducci performing the song against an atmospheric backdrop of watercolour paintings created by Ducci and Letizia Mandolesi.

Like a warm blanket on a foggy autumn evening, ‘It’s Hard to be Easily Loved’ envelops you in Ducci’s softly purring vocals, backed by sparsely strummed nylon guitar. The chorus ramps up the warmth with the addition of Letizia Mandolesi’s softly vocalised ‘Aaahs’. Yet another pensive beauty from Michele Ducci’s impressive solo catalogue.

Says Ducci, “I was improvising with the nylon guitar while it was raining and slowly It’s Hard to Be Easily Loved began to form. It’s the first song among other unpublished songs that I’m doing live and that will be released at the beginning of next year.

Being loved or understood, at times, seems to work like those strange crossings that are the changes of the season, or like falling asleep. It can be very difficult and seems to happen, if it happens and when it happens, out of time. So every expectation appears to be a useless expense. A nylon and paw-legged organ song came out of it that reminds me of the yellow fog that makes the paraeidoly of a cat in the poem The Love Song of A.J. Prufrock by Elliot:

“Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.”