Songfacts®:

• Written by Ian Axel and Chad King of the pop-rock duo A Great Big World, this uplifting duet about the bond between a father and son was recorded by Andrea Bocelli and his son Matteo Bocelli for the Italian tenor's 2018 album, Si.
  
  As his first album of original material in 14 years, the goal was to help the classical performer cross over into the pop realm. Producer Bob Ezrin (Pink Floyd's The Wall) told Variety in 2019: "The remit I was given was they wanted to make the greatest classical record of all time with all new material."
• Bocelli's team reached out to A Great Big World and asked them to write a song similar to "Say Something," the duo's hit 2013 breakup ballad featuring Christina Aguilera. They came up with "Fall On Me," and envisioned it as a moving duet between Bocelli and a female singer. But Ezrin wasn't sold on the demo.
  
  "It just didn't work for me in terms of the ethos of the piece," he explained. "I thought it was deeper than a regular love song. What I did hear in the lyric was the possibility of telling a slightly different story, which instead of being a woman who was unsure of love and a man reassuring her in some way, that it becomes a young man who is unsure of love and life and whose father comes to him from far away, perhaps from beyond the grave, and tells him that he's going to be OK."
  
  At Ezrin's request, Axel and King rewrote the lyrics as a father/son duet, and it was only natural for the elder Bocelli's real-life son to join him on the track.
• Matteo, who released his self-titled debut solo album in 2023, wanted to sing on the tune from the moment he first heard it, so he hatched a plan to get himself the gig.
  
  "'Fall On Me' was the only song that was really pop," he said in a 2023 Songfacts interview. "I thought, This is an amazing song. It's beautiful. You can't lose it. You've got to try it. To try to convince him, I thought, Maybe if I make a demo, I may convince him because I'm a lot closer to the way I approach the music vocally. I was kind of similar.
  
  In the end, I ended up singing with him because the producer, Bob Ezrin, said, 'Who's this guy singing? He's great.' My father was like, 'This is Matteo.' Bob said, 'We've got to have a duet with the two of you.' And that's how "Fall On Me' happened. It was very natural."
• This plays over the end credits to the 2018 Disney film The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. The Bocellis recorded it in several different languages, including Italian, French, German, Spanish and Russian, so viewers around the world could hear the tune in their native tongue.
• Matteo and Italian singer-songwriter Fortunato Zampaglione provided the Italian lyrics.
• Si was Andrea Bocelli's first album to reach #1 in both the US and UK, which was a pretty big deal considering a classical album hadn't topped the charts in 10 years in the US and 20 years in the UK. It was also nominated for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album at the 2020 Grammy Awards but lost to Look Now by Elvis Costello & The Imposters.
• A Great Big World recorded this with Christina Aguilera and debuted it live at the 2019 American Music Awards. Their version, featured on A Great Big World's 2021 album, Particles, peaked at #37 on the Adult Pop Songs chart, #9 on the Digital Song Sales chart, and #8 on the Pop Digital Song Sales chart.
  
  An accompanying music video, directed by Se Oh (Celine Dion's "Courage") features Aguilera as the Queen of Spring who breathes life into a snow-covered landscape.