I was in a budget meeting last year where my director spent twenty minutes trying to figure out why Q3 numbers were off. I knew exactly why. Bad timing on the campaign launch, we missed the back-to-school window by eleven days, I’d flagged it in an email nobody read. I sat there and watched him spiral through spreadsheets while I doodled in my notebook. Eventually someone else said something half-right and he ran with it. I let him. I’ve been doing this version of math my whole life. Too much, too certain and suddenly you’re the difficult one, the one who makes rooms feel small. So you sand the edges off. You hold the answer until someone else almost gets there. You make yourself easier to be around. The thing is, the version of you that actually knows the answer doesn’t disappear just because you’re not using her. She keeps showing up sharper than you left her, building force you haven’t officially released yet. Cinzia’s ‘Tidal Wave’ is about what happens when that stops working, when she gets too damn strong to manage and the surface finally gives.
The production on this is stunning. Cinzia baked Greek and Roman mythological heritage into the electronica framework deliberately, the sound of where she comes from embedded in the architecture of where she’s going. This is her lane. Italian-American and cinematic, with a catalog that’s landed in Dawson’s Creek, Charmed, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and CSI. She’s worked with John Avila from Oingo Boingo, Jim Wirt who shaped Incubus and No Doubt, Ross Robinson who built the edge of Korn and Limp Bizkit, Warren Huart who’s worked with Steven Tyler. That’s a map of how a songwriter builds range across twenty years. All of it shows up in ‘Tidal Wave.’ Every layer earning its place.
Advertisement
She opens in motion. “I ride along the road ahead of me / unfolding out my earthly dream / and hold on tightly to the wheel.” There’s no asking, no tentative setup. She’s already moving, already in the driver’s seat of her own narrative. The feminine awakening in this song doesn’t start at the awakening moment. It starts mid-journey. She’s been moving. The hold-on-tightly is precision. Then she names the force trying to redirect her: “Won’t miss a turn, won’t miss a beat, won’t let it lead me where it wants to take me and everybody else.” And everybody else. That’s the whole line. The force pulling her off course pulls everyone else with it, and she’s the one deciding not to follow.
The chorus is where Cinzia turns the heat all the way up. “Come catch me if you can / I dare you now / Don’t underestimate / What I’m about.” The dare is cool. Calm. A smirk. Then the follow-through: “Don’t need no one to rescue me / Growing steady and gaining speed just like a tidal wave.” The tidal wave is the metaphor that makes this whole song work. A wave builds mass underwater where nobody can see it until the force of everything gathered below finally reaches the surface. That’s what this song is about. The period before the surface reveal.
The verse that gets under my skin is the warrior section. “The warrior hides inside of me and she’s been training in the dark.” Training in the dark. The concealment is strategic. She’s been doing the work privately and the privacy is part of the methodology. Then the momentum shifts: “Her spark is growing wilder / And I won’t hold her for too long / She has been getting far too strong / The stakes are getting higher.” The warrior outgrows the container. Cinzia’s singing about a threshold being crossed. And then the image that closes it out: “Has fire in her eyes / Fire in her eyes.” Say it twice. It deserves the repetition.
Advertisement
I should say here, I dated someone once who had this energy. Watching her walk into rooms after she stopped apologizing for herself was its own kind of phenomenon. People would clock it immediately without being able to name what changed. Something’s different about her. That’s the tidal wave quality. You feel it before you see it.
The song is built on a conceptual premise that Cinzia lays out plainly. A deity challenged to live in the human dimension. A heroine secretly training, building an arsenal, until she reconnects to her true nature. The Greek and Roman heritage as sonic context, reminding her where she comes from so she can step into where she’s going. It’s mythological framing applied to something that feels completely personal and immediate. Cinzia creates cinematic, dance-driven songs centered on transformation and feminine power, and ‘Tidal Wave’ is that mission statement at full force.
I stopped letting the meeting version win sometime around November. Stopped doing the math of how much to hold back. Said the answer out loud before someone else could almost get there. The room adjusted. Rooms always do. The warrior Cinzia’s singing about, the one who’s been training in the dark, running out of room to stay hidden? I know her. She’s been showing up uninvited for years and I finally stopped sending her home. Add ‘Tidal Wave’ to your rotation. Let it run loud.
