checkmate by Ron Gallo

The very last day of recording the album that became checkmate, Ron Gallo wrote and recorded the title track. Which, in his words, half-jokingly, is "my first true love song that also happens to be the best love song ever written". It encapsulates the entire purpose of the album which takes his previous motto - "The world is fucked, but the universe is inside you" and changes it to "The world is ending, what can I hold on to?".

After years of navigating artistic reinvention and resisting change, Ron Gallo arrives at his latest album, checkmate, with a newfound clarity and sense of purpose. Stripped down and direct, checkmate marks a reset: a shedding of old selves, old anger, and the need for introspection. Social commentary has always been a driving force behind Gallo’s music, and checkmate finds the bridge between personal inner dialogues and cultural analysis, grasping the vulnerability he once avoided.

What remains here is distilled: raw thoughts about love, identity, and survival in a collapsing world. Gallo calls it “a process to kill off my old self,” a release from years of hiding, whether it’s behind a comic veil or a wall of instruments and noise. With checkmate, he finds himself aligned with a new audience who have found his music through social media riffs turned viral smashes, 7am Songs, who come with no preconceived notions—only a desire to connect. The personal vulnerability found in these songs are far more relatable than Gallo could have first imagined. Inner dialogues we all seem to be having, but struggling to find the words for, until now.

the world is fucked,
but the universe is inside you.

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