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Yola, the powerhouse singer/songwriter, gets personal on her sophomore album Stand for Myself.
With lyrics inspired by her own experiences and emotions and a sound that mixes soul and classic pop, the album distinguishes itself from her 2019 debut: the four-time Grammy- nominated Americana/roots-heavy Walk Through Fire. For the new outing, Yola once again partnered with producer (and one-half of the Black Keys) Dan Auerbach to create a no-skips lineup of flawless tracks that are entirely and unapologetically representative of who she is, while paying tribute to anyone who has ever been made to feel like an outsider.
“It is 1,000 percent representative of who I am, and my hopes to connect with those who have been made to feel like they were ‘other,’” says Yola.
She does so by way of twelve modern retro tracks, each a beautiful balance of synthy ’70s pop, ’90s neo soul, and of the moment messaging.
“It’s an album about paradigm shift, about challenging the bias and mental conditioning that create bigotry and tokenism. It’s about the moments we need to stand for ourselves and show our true complexity,” she says. “Musically it’s me, so it’s genre fluid to the max. It has a lot of rock in its sound and aesthetic and also symphonic soul and classic pop, too. I also mined a lot of my early ’90s R&B and Britpop influences when I was preparing to record the album.”
She says much of the lyrical inspiration came to her in 2020—but its origins date back much further.
“While in isolation last year I had a lot of time to reflect and looked back to some ideas I had been working on that were over eight years old,” she says. “I worked late at night when I was in a dream-like state. I wanted to access the part of my brain that all of the information is stored—the colliculi; the part that specifically collect everything that you’ve ever seen. I wanted to get into a state of mind where I could make the elegant connections between things I had experienced and the message I wanted to share. As a result, there’s less of a filter and it’s the most ‘me’ music I have ever written. I’m so proud of it.”
Yola’s ability to tap into her own psyche and create universally relatable and often emotional art is on full display on tracks like “Break the Bough,” which she was inspired to write after her mother’s funeral. What could easily be a dark and sad song plays out as a triumphant anthem about the freedom waiting for us on the other side. In fact, many of the album’s songs take deep topics that are rife with raw emotion and juxtapose them against infectious horn and rhythm accompaniment that feel straight out of a Supremes album.
But it’s the album’s title track that resonates most intensely with Yola. “‘Stand For Myself ’ is my own personal anthem. It’s about being back to who I should be, which is how I feel right now. I feel like I have so much agency musically and in the message behind this album and I’ve been building to this for a long time,” she says. “There have been times in my life where I have not been in control of my own agency; I have been gaslit into dependency on others musically or in my personal relationship. Those days are well and truly over and, in this song, I’m talking to a ‘token’ who has shared similar experiences in the hopes that it will inspire others.”
Now the immaculate performer is looking forward to sharing her message with audiences in person. With opening gigs for Chris Stapleton booked from fall 2021 through spring 2022 and a Ryman solo show debut slated for May 2022, Yola is ready to join audiences live and in person. “I think we’re all done with Zoom concerts,” she says with her trademark humor. “Sorry to all the Zoom shareholders, but we are all ready to be in the same room and have sore ears again.”