Almost fifty years after its birth, The year to come Of Lucio Dalla continues to return on time for New Year’s Eve. Not as a reassuring ritual, but as an open question. More than a prophecy, the Bolognese singer-songwriter’s song is an exercise in clarity. And perhaps that is precisely why he continues to speak to us.
Every end of the year the language of greetings is filled with promises. Wishes for happiness, change, sudden turning points. The future is loaded with expectations as if time alone had the power to transform things. In this chorus of reassuring words, there is one that continues to stand out for its sobriety and truth.
The lyrics of Dalla’s song offer no illusions. It offers a posture. It doesn’t indicate what will happen, but how to stay within the wait. And this is why, even today, it functions as one of the most honest wishes one can exchange.
Written in 1978, in an Italy marked by fear and uncertainty, it was the Years of Lead, this song today seems to have lost any precise temporal location. It doesn’t talk about a specific year, but about a human condition that recurs every time the future appears fragile.
The year to come by Lucio Dalla
Dear friend, I’m writing to you so I can distract myself a bit
And since you are very far away, I will write to you more strongly
Since you left there’s some big news
The old year is over now
But something is still wrong hereWe don’t go out much in the evening, including when it’s a holiday
And there are those who have placed sandbags near the window
And we go without speaking for weeks at a time
And to those who have nothing to say
There is some time leftBut the television said that the new year
It will bring a transformation
And we are all already waitingIt will be three times Christmas and celebration all day
Every Christ will come down from the cross
The birds will also return
There will be food and light all year round
Even the mute will be able to speak
While the deaf already do itAnd we will make love, each as he pleases
Priests will also be able to marry
But only at a certain age
And without major disturbances someone will disappear
Perhaps they will be the ones who are too smart
And idiots of all agesSee, dear friend, what I write to you and tell you
And how happy I am
To be here in this moment
See, see, see, seeSee, dear friend, what needs to be invented
To be able to laugh about it
To continue to hopeWhat if this year passed in an instant
You see, my friend, how important it becomes
May I be there in this moment tooThe year that is coming in a year will pass
I’m getting ready, this is the newsFonte: Musixmatch
Composers: Lucio Dalla
Lyrics of The Year to Come © Universal Music Publishing Ricordi Srl., Bmg Ariola Musica Spa
The year to come: a wish that asks for presence, not promises
Lucio Dalla’s letter was created to provide guidance. And it does so starting from a concrete experience, not from an abstraction. The year to come it was written in the last days of 1978, in one of the most tense and restless moments in recent Italian history. These are the Years of Lead. Political violence marks everyday life, fear enters homes, the future appears fragile and uncertain.
The first draft takes shape in Monghidoro, in the house of Giuseppe Rossetti, painter and close friend of Dalla, detained for political reasons. The distance evoked in the text is not symbolic, but real. On New Year’s Eve, while the calendar changes and the rhetoric of greetings takes hold, Lucio chooses to stay near the Dozza prison in Bologna to make his presence felt by his imprisoned friend. It is from this silent gesture that the letter is born.
This context is decisive for understanding the meaning of the wish. The year to come it does not entrust change to the passing of time, but to the quality of human presence. The future, in the text, is not a promise to wait for, but a space to be inhabited with clarity, responsibility and creativity.
“Dear friend I am writing to you”: the wish comes from a real relationship
Lucio Dalla’s text opens with a simple, almost modest formula. A simple letter that begins, and it couldn’t be so, with “Dear friend, I’m writing to you”. Not a proclamation, not a collective message. Lucio Dalla chooses to write to someone, because the future never concerns an abstraction, but a concrete person. The wish, here, comes from the relationship and the possible closeness, even when the distance is imposed.
This choice immediately establishes the tone of the piece. Talking about the future means first of all staying in relationship, not isolating yourself while waiting. Offering an overview of the lifestyle you live:
We don’t go out much in the evening
This sentence returns a precise photograph of the collective emotional climate. It’s not just a reference to the Years of Lead. It is a condition that returns every time fear narrows spaces and changes habits. Life becomes cautious, the world seems smaller.
Lucio Dalla inserts this awareness into the wish. Before talking about tomorrow, he invites us to look at the present for what it is. Every authentic wish starts from here.
The promises of the future and their limits
In the central part of the text, the promises accumulate and become deliberately disproportionate. The transformation is announced, the change postponed, the future full of expectations. It is the typical language of moments of transition: someone promises, everyone waitso.
Dalla stages this mechanism to show its limits. The announced future always remains external. The passing of time alone does not produce any turning point. The song invites us to recognize this gap between promise and reality. The answer is entrusted to inventiveness.
What do you have to invent to be able to laugh about it
At a certain point the text takes a decisive turn. In the face of fear and closure, invention emerges. Laughing, creating, imagining become tools to overcome difficulty without being overwhelmed by it.
Here the wish takes concrete form. Hope does not arise from optimism, but from the ability to find new ways of being in the world when the context makes it difficult.
“May I be there in this moment too”: the responsibility of presence
In the final passage of the song, Lucio Dalla brings everything to the present moment. After having gone through the wait, the promises, the fears and the invention, the center of the wish becomes being there. Not tomorrow, not when conditions are better, but now.
You see, my friend, how important it becomes
that in this moment I too am there
These words affirm a simple and radical responsibility. Time only makes sense if someone decides to inhabit it. Being present means participating in one’s life, in relationships, in the shared world, without retreating into waiting or delegating what concerns the present to the future.
For the new year, this message resonates with particular force. In a time that invites distraction or renunciation, being there becomes a conscious act.
“I am preparing, and this is the news”: the final wish
Immediately afterwards, the text makes its final movement. Being there does not remain an abstract intention, but translates into an active posture.
I’m getting ready, and this is the news
Preparing does not mean predicting the future or controlling it. It means cultivating the ability to remain present within uncertainty. Preparing means sharpening your gaze, strengthening your attention, training personal responsibility as time passes.
In this closure, The year to come delivers his most authentic wish. The new year will pass, like all the others. The novelty does not lie in the calendar, but in the willingness to really be there, ready to live in the time that comes.
This is the wish that Lucio Dalla entrusts to those who listen. And it is the most serious wish we can exchange today.
