CITOVITZ AND THE FIREFLIES OF FEBRUARY — the recording project of Polish-born guitarist, composer, and songwriter ANDRZEJ CITOWICZ, based in Cairo, Egypt — announce the release of Beautiful Damage: 1990–1996, a deeply personal full-length album built from original songs written between the ages of 14 and 20, discovered on two old tape cassettes, and completed three decades later in a home studio.
The album arrives in April 2026 (released yesterday on April 13th) — the same year Andrzej turns 50 — and stands as one of the most honest and emotionally complete works of his recording career.
Stream on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/4fRhfDdxBsnxDjpZUrgnBd?si=yrBTjq4UTE26DK7BsvkIJQ
THE CASSETTES THAT SURVIVED
The story begins not in a studio but in the quiet shock of rediscovery. Two tape cassettes surfaced — the earliest musical archive Andrzej ever created. Recorded on an old acoustic guitar in Wałbrzych, Poland, between 1990 and 1996, the demos were raw and unfinished. Some had lyrics. Others were just chord progressions, melodies without words — ideas a teenage boy could hear in his head but was not yet equipped to complete.
They were put away. Life filled the space between then and now. Love, loss, marriage, grief, survival, and the long slow work of understanding who you are. And when those cassettes were finally played again, Andrzej heard not relics — but blueprints. Songs that had always known what they wanted to be. They had simply been waiting for the life that would finish them.
“This is the next chapter of my music journey. I found old tape cassettes. Two of them. My first songs from 1990 to 1996. Some with lyrics. Some without. Just ideas a kid couldn’t finish yet. I wasn’t ready then. I am now.”
BON JOVI, DEF LEPPARD, AND THE SOUND OF A GENERATION
To understand Beautiful Damage: 1990–1996, you need to understand what was playing when these songs were first written. Bon Jovi’s New Jersey era. Def Leppard’s Hysteria and Adrenalize. Richie Sambora’s guitar work. Desmond Child’s songwriting architecture. The Europe of Out of This World. Whitesnake. Winger. These were not influences — they were the air Andrzej breathed as a teenager discovering what music could do to the human chest.
That DNA runs through every track on this album — the melodic power ballad structures, the emotional guitar hooks, the stacked harmonies and cinematic arrangements. But Beautiful Damage: 1990–1996 is not nostalgia. It is a conversation between a boy who absorbed those sounds in the early 1990s and a man who has spent thirty years learning what to do with them.
“Bon Jovi’s Always premiered in late 1994. I was 18. I sat down with my guitar and recorded chords that same week — just the feeling.
The Def Leppard influence runs equally deep — not just in the guitar tones and production choices, but in the philosophical approach to the power ballad as a vehicle for emotional truth. Phil Collen and Steve Clark’s harmonized guitar work, the wall-of-sound production of Mutt Lange, the way Hysteria made vulnerability feel enormous — these are the standards Andrzej measured himself against as a teenager and continues to reach toward today.
THE TITLE TRACK: WHERE THE ALBUM FINDS ITS NAME
Beautiful Damage — the title track — is the song that gives the entire project its emotional compass. Written in the early 1990s and completed in 2026, it speaks of lost youth not with bitterness but with the strange, hard-earned gratitude of someone who survived long enough to understand what those years were actually worth.
On this track alone, Andrzej is joined by his longtime creative partner and bassist Patryk Szymański — a collaborator of more than a decade, and in every meaningful sense, a brother. Patryk’s bass work on the title song does not simply anchor the rhythm. It speaks its own truth through the arrangement, responding to and deepening the emotional content of the track in the way that only years of musical trust can produce.
“Sometimes you need 50 years of scars to finish what you started at 14 — and left behind in your twenties. I wasn’t ready to write these words then. I needed everything that happened in between to understand what this song was always about.”
“Patryk’s bass on Beautiful Damage says things I didn’t even know the song needed said. That is what happens when you make music with someone you truly trust. They hear what you can’t yet hear yourself.”
Watch Beautiful Damage lyric video here:
https://youtu.be/5V9WemRjtoE?si=VBJr2aWiyhJcUOE3
A SONG FOR ESTHER: SHEREEN’S GIFT
Among the songs on Beautiful Damage: 1990–1994, one stands apart in origin and meaning. A Song For Esther was written for a very special person — and it was Shereen Shoukry Citowicz, Andrzej’s wife of nearly 18 years, who added her touch, her heart, and her voice to bring it fully to life.
Shereen has become one of the most significant creative forces in Andrzej’s musical world. She is not a background presence. She is a full collaborator — her lyrical voice, her emotional instincts, and her willingness to place the most honest parts of herself inside a song have shaped some of the most powerful work Citovitz and The Fireflies of February has ever released.
On A Song For Esther, her contribution is both personal and profound. The song exists because of a person who mattered. Shereen made sure the music was worthy of that person.
“Shereen gave this song what I could not give it alone. She understood who it was for and what it needed to say. Her voice, her heart — they are woven into every note of it. I am grateful every day that she walks this musical journey with me.”
THE SONGS AND THEIR MEANING
Beautiful Damage: 1990–1996 is a collection that moves across thirty years of unfinished business. A Song For Esther carries the quiet, irreplaceable weight of a song written for someone specific and made complete by love.
Every song on this album was written during the years when music is absorbed most completely — the teenage years, the early twenties, the period when the heart is fully open and the vocabulary to describe what it feels has not yet arrived. That vocabulary exists now. The album is the proof.
“These are not old songs given a new coat of paint. They are finally what they always wanted to be. The demos were the bones. 2026 gave them everything else.”
THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPLETION
Beautiful Damage: 1990–1996 arrives in the same year as Andrzej’s 50th birthday — the same year he released the My Revenge EP as a declaration of survival. Where that EP looked across fifty years of living, this album reaches back to the very beginning — to the bedroom in Wałbrzych, the acoustic guitar, the cassette player, the boy who felt everything and wrote it down before he understood what he was writing.
Completing these songs was not an act of nostalgia. It was an act of responsibility. To the boy who recorded them. To the music that survived. To the life that made finishing them possible.
“The world is too crazy to wait with dreams. Time to finish them.”
Andrzej Citowicz operates entirely independently — no label, no mainstream industry support, no compromise. His home studio in Cairo is where every note of this album was shaped and recorded. The living room rockstar, as he has called himself — building something real and permanent from the most personal materials available: memory, survival, love, and the guitar his late father Arkadiusz hand-built an amplifier for, all those years ago in Poland.
TRACK CREDITS
Music & Guitars: Andrzej Citowicz
Bass on ‘Beautiful Damage’: Patryk Szymański
Vocals & Heart on ‘A Song For Esther’: Shereen Shoukry Citowicz
Lyrics: Andrzej Citowicz / Shereen Shoukry Citowicz (where credited)
Originally Recorded: 1990–1996 (acoustic and early electric guitar demos on tape cassette)
Completed & Arranged: 2026
Artist: Citovitz and The Fireflies of February
STREAM & WATCH – ARTIST CONTACTS & LINKS:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7aIeg5DyI7xwkYLsBgJNWf
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AndrzejCitowicz
Instagram: https://instagram.com/citovitz
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/citovitz/
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