Michael Marcagi Announces Debut Album Under The Streetlights, Shares “Don’t Include Me (American Dream)”
- All Country News
- 26 minutes ago
- 3 min read
The glow of a streetlight has a way of making everything feel closer than it really is, memories, mistakes, the life you thought you were building. For Michael Marcagi, that hazy in-between is where his music lives, and it’s exactly where his debut solo album, Under The Streetlights, is set to land when it arrives February 6 via Warner Records.
The Ohio-born, Multi-Platinum certified singer-songwriter announced the long-awaited project this week, and with it shared a song that feels like the emotional thesis statement of the record. “Don’t Include Me (American Dream)” is Marcagi at his most stripped, most honest, and quietly his most devastating yet.
Built on steady, unfussy production and Americana-folk textures that feel both lived-in and refreshingly current, the track unfolds like a slow drive through a neighborhood you no longer belong to. It’s easy listening in the truest sense: the kind that sneaks up on you, settles in your chest, and stays there long after the final chord fades. Marcagi’s vocals, arguably some of his best to date carry a restrained ache, never overselling the pain, never rushing the release.
"Don’t Include Me (American Dream)” cuts deep with disarming simplicity. A cul-de-sac house. Hanging Christmas lights. Holidays that hurt more than they heal. Marcagi sketches a future once planned together, now occupied by someone else, and lets the weight of that realization do the heavy lifting.
“I drive by the house / From what I can tell / Now you’re livin’ there with somebody else,” he sings, before delivering the quiet gut punch at the song’s center: “Now I can see your American dream / Don’t include me.”
It’s not bitterness that lingers here, it’s acceptance. The song lives in that brutal middle ground between wanting to go back and knowing you never can. Marcagi even dares to wonder if different choices, letting her win the small fights, turning back time, would have changed anything at all. The answer, implied but never spoken, is no.
As Marcagi explains, the song is “about trying to move on when it seems impossible… accepting who you are and moving forward when all things are drawing you back to a person or a place.” That tension, between motion and memory, forward and back, drives the track’s emotional pull and makes it feel universally relatable.
Paired with a vintage-styled visualizer that mirrors the song’s nostalgic haze, “Don’t Include Me (American Dream)” positions Under The Streetlights as a debut that isn’t chasing trends or volume. Instead, Marcagi is trusting the power of restraint, storytelling, and lived experience, letting quiet moments speak the loudest.
If this single is any indication, Under The Streetlights won’t just introduce Michael Marcagi as a solo artist. It will announce him as a songwriter unafraid to sit in the shadows, look back at what was lost, and still find the courage to keep driving forward, even when the road leads past a house that used to feel like home.
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