My Brightest Diamond Previews New LP ‘A Million and One’ With Dark, Funky Song
My Brightest Diamond examines self-discovery through communal groove on her new song “It’s Me on the Dance Floor.” The whirlwind track previews singer-songwriter Shara Nova’s upcoming fifth studio album, A Million and One, out November 23rd via Rhyme & Reason Records.
The single opens with an eerie organ section and a steady, programmed kick drum pulse. “I’m all alone, turn the lights low,” Nova croons over fragmented backing vocals. “Maybe it’s me, it’s me I’m looking for/ It’s me, it’s me on the dance floor,” she sings, as the song blooms into a jerky, syncopated chorus with palm-muted electric guitars.
Nova recorded A Million and One with producer Anthony “The Twilite Zone” Khan (Gorillaz, Kanye West) and engineer Andrew Scheps (Adele, Lana Del Rey). In a statement about the record, which follows 2014’s This Is My Hand, she explored the track’s themes of physicality and inward searching.
“What’s my relationship to my body like, without respect to how someone else perceives it?” she mused. “I wanted to write a dance song that wasn’t about hooking up with someone, or looking outside myself for something, but about finding myself through movement, exploring my own body. Sometimes I will go to a club and don’t want to be distracted by everyone else’s energy, but I want to dance hard, so I face the wall, playing with what shadows I can create, not caring if other people watch, or don’t watch. How hard can I push myself until my body is completely exhausted on the dance floor and then in the exhausted state; how can I find other kinds of movements?”
Nova – who lived outside of Detroit, Michigan as a teenager and returned to the city in 2008 – crafted A Million and One partly as a tribute to Detroit and its influence on her formative years. “The album examines the quest for my individuality and the search for a deeper relationship to my body, my neighbors and to the planet,” she said.
My Brightest Diamond will promote the LP with a winter North American tour featuring indie-pop band Stars. That trek, which follows a run of international dates, launches December 2nd in Minneapolis, Minnesota and wraps the 16th in Montreal, Canada.