Nicole Atkins
Goodnight Rhonda Lee

If you come from Neptune City, and Nicole hails from around there, you can go knocking on the doors of the golden world of cinema boasting a shared hometown with Jack Nicholson, and that’s no small thing, and maybe someone will even open up for you.

Otherwise, if you want to try to break into the equally golden world of the seven notes like Nicole, you might drop the name of Garry Tallent, who from the start becomes a part of the E-Street Band and tours far and wide with Bruce Springsteen, and to pass the time between one destination and the next, he tells him about Neptune's first celebrity, Marie “Madame Marie” Castello, and he becomes so enchanted by her story that he ends up giving her a small part in «4th of July, Asbury Park» alongside the undisputed star Sandy.

The fact is that Nicole has decided that when she grows up, she will be a singer and live off that, so during school and college years she forms a band that lasts just those years, and after that, they quickly disappear without a trace, like an EP that circulates little or not at all.

Nicole, however, is not discouraged and continues to stubbornly and tenaciously nurture her adolescent fantasy until she realizes the most classic of American daydreams and finds herself holding a recording contract with none other than a major label, she who is an absolute novice, not even that, and everyone around her wonders how this story came to be: it happened that some bigwig at the major label in question was ready to gamble a heap of money on the breakout of an English teenager who would make them return a thousand times as much, exploiting the simple formula of chamber pop, the slightly elegant and slightly playful pop of the '50s upheld by orchestrations of strings and brass that pop up from everywhere; incidentally, that is also the magic formula of Nicole, and the bigwigs don't hesitate to sign her, foreseeing in her the next golden goose.

If, a little disrespectfully, Nicole should embody the goose, then her debut solo album should be the golden egg, and such a precious thing should have an impactful title. Seeking inspiration, Nicole holds a meeting every afternoon at the Neptune café, long her favorite hangout, attended by her boyfriend and the most loyal patrons, who take Nicole's story damn seriously because they've encountered that girl unavoidably for years, and now she's a bit like their daughter or at least a family member, to support when life is about to turn for the better and to congratulate when things are done. It's not quite clear who proposes the title «Neptune City», because it’s a mark of identity and also because it evokes «Greetings from Asbury Park», this, however, only a few understand; either way, Nicole settles on «Neptune City».

Perhaps that brainstorming session produced a mere breeze; still, the album is well-received by critics and sells reasonably well, and the bigwigs of the major don't complain, although they don't find the coveted golden egg in their hands. Still, the forecasted smash came with that other album, the English teenager, Adele, her «19» sells an enormous amount, even if the title is what it is, that is even less than «Neptune City».

At the café, they stock up on good bottles to celebrate Nicole's homecoming; only the party doesn’t go as it would have in the best of all possible worlds, and between one bottle and another, Nicole is dumped by her boyfriend; she doesn't take it well and starts a relationship much too close with the aforementioned bottles; and then a string of actions she isn't proud of; and the best she manages is to create her alias Rhonda Lee to blame for all the ugliness, a bit like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with the key difference that Rhonda Lee doesn’t hurt anyone except Nicole.

Now, if at some point Adele had lost her mind, the bigwigs of the major certainly wouldn't have axed her just like that, as they instead deliver the final blow to Nicole and Rhonda Lee; and since proverbs are such because they reveal self-evident truths, for those two it keeps pouring when it rains, and proverbially their life falls apart.

Nicole tries to change her course and once again relies on music, bids farewell to her dreams of glory and chamber pop, and begins to work on a new album, she wants it decisive and direct, like a cold shower to clear her mind and bring her back to herself; the new album comes out just like Nicole wants it, but it doesn’t achieve any result other than increasing her confusion, she doesn’t recognize herself; not even the loyal patrons of the café recognize her, who now only meet her sporadically, yet they still care a lot about her because, after all, Nicole is as if she's their daughter, and now that her life has turned the wrong way, that care has become a world, so, it’s not exactly clear who, convinces her to face a rehabilitation path and stop listening to what Rhonda Lee whispers in her head, that no, they can make it on their own to get back on track, they’re perfectly fine on their own, the two of them, they don’t need anyone else.

Nicole starts rehab, talks less and less with Rhonda Lee, listens to her less and less. It lasts a few years. In the end, Nicole decides it's time to separate her bed from Rhonda Lee’s, then to separate the rooms, but gently, tenderly wishing her goodnight before turning off the bedside lamp and closing the door.

This is how «Goodnight Rhonda Lee» is born, a first-person account, faithful and a posteriori of troubled months lived physically and mentally, smoothed only by the sometimes bitter and other times ironic awareness of the narrator and by the sweetness of the music and that chamber pop to which Nicole returns once more, to settle the scores and close the circle.

«They say I’d be better off alone / I’m trying / Please, if you see me crying / Forgive me, I’m slightly crazy».

This is how Nicole’s confessions begin, from the awareness of past loneliness and the present desire for company and help, even in music; she calls the old friends of always, now they recognize her again, now they really recognize that “daughter” of theirs and respond present without hesitation for a moment, and even some illustrious acquaintances respond: there’s Chris Isaak, tied to Nicole by the same feeling for languid atmospheres, ballads in a country scent adorned by a slide that seems to weep, and old-style orchestrations, and he co-signs with her the initial «A Little Crazy» and the homonymous, splendid «Goodnight Rhonda Lee»; and there are the Dap-Kings invigorating with soul energy «Brokedown Luck».

Above all, there’s Nicole, who tells you about the evenings spent singing her songs to the shadows projected on room walls, learning to live with loneliness, succumbing to its charm, while cradling the hope of someone coming to save her from her darkest thoughts; of someone with something to say worth listening to and the desire to lose herself in listening, to recover all the time spent speaking vacuously; of all missed opportunities that don't come back and we common mortals who, unlike the phoenix rising from its ashes, we burn and crash to the ground and there’s no resurrection; of the hope to wake up from a nightmare into a dream without pain, after so many nights spent listening to her breath and her heart beating too loudly.

Which, after all, is the best wish one can offer after wishing Rhonda Lee goodnight, hoping she too finds peace.