Pathos:
Ludovico Einaudi announced his 2025 album The Summer Portraits back in early October last year. And as an artist who has released many new-age, modern classical albums, it’s clear that he had read the room with this particular track from the release.
The album was written in summer in Italy, and while The Summer Portraits is generally uplifting, and tries to pull the listener out of the doldrums…
The new project is inspired partially by the musician’s childhood in Torino. “I always considered Torino a place I would never go back to live. It was very grey, very industrial – I felt like I was in a cage,” Einaudi says in a press statement. “It’s a strange place, very poetic in a way. The soul of the people is more hidden. They don’t show things off – you have to find the dynamism inside yourself…”
…Pathos very much acknowledges the starting place of that journey.
And that follows along with the findings of the World Happiness Report, which came out at the end of the last month. People are generally less happy. This snapshot was taken just before November last year (before the US Election), and the US (24) and the UK (23) were already at their lowest ever positions.
This graph shows a very basic “Life Evaluation” perception score for a few nations, where 10 is the best that your life could be, and 0 is the worst. I’ve included the score for Finland and Afghanistan – the top and bottom rated countries in the study.
I’ve also included Ukraine, who are just behind SA, despite having their country invaded by the murderous forces of a despotic, nuclear-capable regime right on their doorstep.
We don’t have the same issue with Botswana.
Yet.
It will be interesting, given the… er… somewhat “extreme” new US government and its wide-reaching policies, what next year’s results will look like.
Assuming we’re still here, of course.