It comes out Friday July 17 Carandirúthe new single by Eyes For Nigiri Records / Sony Music Italy. The song arrives two months ago Origami and it brings with it a detail that is as valuable as the song: it was the fans who chose it as a single.
During a private meeting, the artist from Lodi played two unreleased songs to a group of supporters and asked them to indicate their favorite by writing it anonymously on a note. Carandirú garnered the most votes and became the new release. It's not fan engagement from Instagram posts, it's a recording decision delegated to the listener: a choice that remains rarer in the Italian market than the labels let on.
Why Carandirú is called that
The title is the name of a former Brazilian prison, among the best known in South America for the 1992 massacre. Occhi empties it of the original reference and uses it as a personal, almost superstitious code word. It's a surprising operation, and the meaning is clear in the chorus: “we just wanted a film-like story / that lasts a night or a rest stop / that is nevermind like Nirvana / or Carandirú in the hour of air”. The prison becomes the image of a restricted space in which however one can breathe, the hour of fresh air as a minimum measure of freedom.
The song talks about the moment in which everything still seems possible and reflects on the weight of expectations, on the idea that the value of an experience does not coincide with the result it produces. A theme that the author claims as personal rather than generational.
“Carandirú has become my code word for a way to approach life”says Occhi. “In the chorus I sing 'I just wanted a movie-like story, that lasts a night or a rest stop', because sometimes we forget that the important thing is not to chase increasingly difficult goals or try to keep up with the standards of others. What matters is how we choose to live the path. It's a song that also serves me, as I'm a perfectionist and I struggle to be satisfied. Every now and then we need to let things take their course, knowing that, one way or another, in the other, they will all contribute to writing the story of the film we are experiencing”.
Who is Occhi: from Sanremo Giovani to the fan vote
It's behind the name Andrea Occhipintiborn in 2004, from Lodi. He began at the age of six in the children's choir of the cathedral, studied piano, made his debut in 2023 with Kandinskyrecorded at the Take Away Studios in Modena after a contact created by distributing USB sticks with his songs at a concert. In 2025 he joins the roster of Nigiri and publish Maradona, Great Casino And Two eyes like yours.
The turning point comes at the end of 2025, when he is selected among the twenty-four of Sanremo Youth with Ullallaa waltz set in a provincial bar. The path stops in the challenge with Without Cribut the move to Rai opens the way for him. Followed by collaboration with call me lighthouse in You told me and, in May, Origami. In the meantime he studies at Bocconi and works as an educator in the oratory, which is where he says he gets almost everything he writes from.
