Yola has returned with the title track to her forthcoming album, Stand For Myself. Produced by Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys) and distributed through his Lazy Eye Sound imprint, Stand For Myself is out on July 30th.
Along with the previously released lead single, “Diamond Studded Shoes“, “Stand For Myself” fills in more details of the evolving artistry of Yola. Co-written by Yola with Auerbach, Hannah V, and Natalie Hemby and featuring The McCrary Sisters on background vocals, the track is imbued with a powerful pop swagger that’s backed up by Yola’s soulful capabilities. Meanwhile, the Allister Ann-directed music video reinforces homages to the strong, empowered female stars that Yola, born Yolanda Quartey, grew up watching.
“My school years were during the 90s and 00s, and Missy Elliott’s videos were always aesthetically superior to me,” Yola said in a press release. “I feel that the video is set in the antechamber to freedom. The feeling of escaping something truly oppressive and heading towards an unknown with a sense of hope and choice you haven’t felt in a long time. We all have the capacity to go through this process in our own minds, I kinda look like a superhero at times, but I’m not. I’m just a person trying to be free.”
“The song’s protagonist ‘token,’ has been shrinking themselves to fit into the narrative of another’s making, but it becomes clear that shrinking is pointless,” Yola added.
Breaking from the bonds of stylistic typecasting is already emerging as a theme in her sophomore full-length release. After being enthusiastically adopted by the Americana scene following the success of 2019’s Walk Through Fire, it appears that Yola is moving in a new artistic direction that, she expresses, is more representative of who she is.
“This song is about a celebration of being awake from the nightmare supremacist paradigm. Truly alive, awake and eyes finally wide open and trained on your path to self actualisation,” Yola said. “You are thinking freely and working on undoing the mental programming that has made you live in fear. It is about standing for ourselves throughout our lives and real change coming when we challenge our thinking. This is who I’ve always been in music and in life. There was a little hiatus where I got brainwashed out of my own majesty, but a bitch is back.”
Watch the music video for the title track to Yola’s forthcoming album, Stand For Myself. The album is available for pre-order here.
Yola – “Stand For Myself” (Official Video)
[Video: Easy Eye Sound]