These Streets by Paolo Nutini
These Streets is the debut studio album by Scottish singer-songwriter Paolo Nutini, released by Atlantic Records on 17 July 2006. Preceded by the single "Last Request", the album debuted and peaked at number 3 on the UK Albums Chart and was later certified quadruple Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry for domestic shipments in excess of 1,200,000 copies. It also entered the charts in many other European countries, and in 2011 it was certified double Platinum by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry for sales of over 2,000,000 copies in Europe. Most of the songs featured on the album were inspired by the end of Nutini's relationship with his long-term girlfriend Teri Brogan, which began when they both were fifteen. Among the others, "Last Request" describes the couple's last night together, while "Rewind" expresses the willing of turning back time before the end of their lovestory. Another auto-biographical intimate relationship served as the inspiration for the album's second single, "Jenny Don't Be Hasty", which tells about Nutini's involvement with an older woman who refused him because of his age. Other tracks from the album explore different themes, like the title-track, which describes the feelings of a boy who leaves his hometown to move to a big city, or "New Shoes", a song telling about a man who finds life easier as he wears a new pair of shoes. According to Nutini, the song was written trying to imagine if solving problems could be as easy as buying shoes is.
Despite being a male singer-songwriter with a guitar emerging in the mid 2000s into a sea of them, there was something different about Paolo Nutini. It could have been the mainland European bounce of his cheery everyman songs (the Scot is of Italian descent) or the fact he cheekily toed the line between cheesy and classic. Either way, his debut <i>These Streets</i> was an instant—and enduring—British hit. In his teens, Nutini had moved to London and performed regularly at a pub in Balham. His ability to captivate and move a crowd with his eyes closed (quite literally, that was how he liked to play) meant he was soon co-signed by artists as significant as The Rolling Stones, Amy Winehouse and KT Tunstall, supporting them on tour. That endearing busker spirit is all across his debut album, mostly written when he was just a teenager and about the end of his first long-term relationship. It opens with the knee-slapper “Jenny Don’t Be Hasty”, a 2000s indie playlist favourite about an almost-tryst with an older woman, and immediately switches gears into his debut single, the ubiquitous acoustic ballad “Last Request”, about a tale of a couple’s last night together. On the latter he sings, “Slow down, lie down/Remember it’s just you and me”, an opening line that has been sung with abandon at British pubs since its conception. The next heart-wrenching ballad “Rewind” is a crystalline—and universally relatable—heartbreak narrative on which Nutini wishes he could turn back time to before his relationship ended. Unwaveringly positive rock-pop number “New Shoes” puts a fresh spin on problem-solving by putting on, well, a pair of new shoes. According to Nutini, he was just trying to imagine a world in which fixing issues was as easy and instantaneous. Despite its follow-ups, <i>These Streets</i> is by far Nutini’s most successful and beloved album. There’s something soul-warming about his approach to simple songwriting done well. It’s an album from the persona of a troubadour with a heart of gold.
