Since profitable the BRITs Rising Star Award in 2021, Griff’s dizzying ascent has each bolted and buoyed. The triple-threat singer, songwriter, and producer (actual identify Sarah Griffiths) has solely simply launched into her first headline tour of Europe, however has supported heavy hitters – most lately Taylor Swift on her record-breaking ‘Eras’ tour. In the meantime, her hit single ‘Black Gap’, taken from her debut mixtape ‘One Foot In Entrance of the Different’, propelled her Stateside onto Late Night time with Seth Meyers, however it is just now, three years later, that Griff releases her debut album, ‘Vertigo’.
Documenting the real-life disorientation of her whirlwind rise and “the concept the world is spinning sooner than you possibly can sustain with”, ‘Vertigo’ captures the highs and lows of a younger lady discovering her potential on a global stage – all whereas navigating existential anxieties and trepidations of the guts. Written between rented Airbnbs (together with Imogen Heap’s Hideaway in Romford), the 23-year-old expertise finds pockets of hope in a stream of self-doubt.
First showing on ‘vert1go vol. 1’ – the primary of two EPs previous the album – the pattering ‘Into The Partitions’ recounts the self-defeating urge to vanish; later within the tracklist and as a counter to such solitary isolation, ‘Pillow In My Arms’ finds Griff looking for consolation within the absence of one other. Her efficiency finds new dexterity in ‘Astronaut’. Over the stirring piano of visitor star Chris Martin, Griff switches from breathy gasps to craving cries, her tongue-in-cheek lyricism lightening even her most delicate moments: “You mentioned that you simply wanted house / Go on then astronaut.”
Griff revels within the euphoria – even whether it is bittersweet. The compelling bass of ‘Hiding Alone’ makes the pained means of therapeutic a gleefully liberating affair, whereas newest single ‘Something’ explores ’80s-tinged pop earlier than emphasising self-worth with bombastic drums and shiny synths, conjuring Haim and Sigrid alongside the best way. Mura Masa’s manufacturing provides a fidgety restlessness to ‘Cycles’, which makes peace with the knowledge of uncertainty, whereas ‘Miss Me Too’ finds jubilant momentum in operating in the direction of the model of your self you believed misplaced.
Most poignant is ‘Eternal’, which sees Griff – a Chinese language-Jamaican daughter of first and second-generation immigrants – voice her fears that she’ll make the errors of her elders: “All their hopes and their desires had been earlier than them / god, I ponder what got here and destroyed them”. On this method and others, ‘Vertigo’ is a diaristic story of scaling mountainous concern, traversing again to her naive youth spent making music in her bed room – and welcoming a brand new chapter with newfound braveness.
Particulars
- Launch date: July 12, 2024
- File label: Warner Music
