New album ‘She’s A Star’ out 27th May
Live @ Badehaus Berlin 30th May: https://bit.ly/3M31kx0
Berlin based alt-pop singer-songwriter Novaa is pleased to announce the final single ‘Vitamins’, lifted from her forthcoming album ‘She’s A Star’ due 27th May.
Novaa lets emotion do the talking, fusing offbeat, unfiltered melodies over personal, introspective lyricism, ‘Vitamins’ might be the antidote we all need right now.
Novaa explains: “Back in winter 2020 a friend of mine Hannah came to visit me in Berlin. We spent some time in my studio to record some double bass, and during that time we felt like writing a new song together. I rarely, mostly never write songs for my own project with others but it was lovely to write a song with one of my close friends. We wanted Vitamins to be a song to oneself, explaining to oneself how difficult it is sometimes to keep living up to your best self, and saying to oneself how much effort and energy one puts into keeping up with everything. We wanted it to be a fun song, and it still is very much to me. It’s light and easy, a song that’s supposed to help you get up in the mornings when you feel like you don’t want to get out of bed. I hope we succeed with that.“
One year after the release of ‘She’s a Rose’, Novaa returns to the stage: ‘She’s a Star’ is the counterpart to the previous album, the other side of the coin. And it manifests her status as one of the most talented and promising European artists.
Born from a line in the song ‘She’s a Rose’, ‘She’s a Star’ evolves into its very own world. While ‘She’s a Star’ praised softness, ‘She’s a Star’ goes into a different direction, showing another side of Novaa: rough beats and soft guitars stand side by side, caress her unique voice. The result? Minimalist yet complex pop for this present age of confusion. Its opener, ‘Trauma’, showcases this combination of contemporary hiphop beats, experimental elements, industrial attitudes and dreamy indie pop early and impressively: scaled down yet full of suspenseful sonic elements, ‘Trauma’ pushes ahead, its lyrics simultaneously vulnerable and funny, dealing with romantic relationships and working through trauma.
“Trauma is about falling in love with your own traumas and less with another human. Often, we project our idea of the world onto another human being and then fall in love with that projection“, Novaa explains. “It was so easy to write this song. First, I had a beat, and then without really sparing a though, I wrote these lyrics along to it – when I came up with the line about trauma, I knew exactly where we’d head.“
It is followed by the similarly danceable, and very much hip hop-inspired ‘The World’s Thing’, an ode to indifference and apathy, a political song without really taking world affairs too seriously. “I needed a song that helps me to find easiness and lightness, something that turns the all-encompassing drama everywhere into comedy, if just for a moment“, Novaa says. The ambiguous track evokes comparison, in the very best sense, to kindred souls such as Lorde or Billie Eilish.
On every single track on ‘She’s a Star’, Novaa counters the growing madness in the world, the music industry, the absurdity of urban dating, and the never-ending demands on women with sarcasm and attitude. There is, for example, ‘School Friends’, a song about school reunions, about nasty memories and about making piece with it all. A song, by the way, that came to Novaa in her dreams. Or ‘You Can F With Me’, directed towards rape culture and its apologists who thrive on victim blaming. “I want listeners to take away just one thing from this song: listen to survivors“, says Novaa, “Create space to heal. The world knows very well how to judge victims of abuse and how to protect perpetrators. And as long as this is the case, I will continue to speak out against it and be loud!“
The album’s apex is, of course, the eponymous ‘She’s A Star’. To Novaa, it is the central song of the record: “it explains why I make music and why I created this space that’s called Novaa. It is about the relationship with myself as well as with other people. The song gets rid of pop music clichés such as that all artists would strive for attention and that fame would be a motor for art. Instead, it celebrates the potential that lies within many people, potential that’s overlooked, ignored and negated. I want my music to be a safe and open space for everyone. A space, where you can take a break from all that the world throws at them, a space, where they can just shine and be at peace with the darkness and the light.”
On ‘She’s a Star’, Novaa merges contemporary pop music with her very own weirdness, experimental pieces coalesce with bedroom pop, humour and the disarming honesty of her lyrics. ‘She’s a Star’ is Novaa’s fourth album after her self-titled debut (2019), the concept album ‘The Futurist’ (2020) and last year’s ‘She’s a Rose’ (2021). Since 2016, she has also released a number of collaborations with friends such as Moglii and others. ‘She’s a Star’ marks one of the pop highlights of this still very young year – and showcases the impressive development Novaa has undergone as an artist and as a person in recent years.
Vitamins / 27th May
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