Listen to a great song that just came out of the oven. Dance music. It gets you through good times, bad times, all times really. And what better way to kick off the weekend than with new music? We’ve got British icon Blakey on the controls today, presenting his brand new track ‘You! Girl…x‘. The track represents the start of a new chapter for the acclaimed artist, steering towards the dancefloor. Blakey, who has previously received steady support across radio and streaming platforms and performed a sold-out headline show at Hackney Social, continues to shape his rise through consistent, quality output rather than industry hype. And this approach has taken him far, with 70 million streams already under his belt, and over 200K monthly Spotify listeners. Lad’s quite something. This high-impact track is built for peak-time energy and points towards the flashy, stimuli-filled club spectrum, recalling the euphoria of ATB and the clipped vocal bounce of Casso’s ‘Prada’. The single follows ‘5 Reasons’, which first introduced this club-facing shift. However, where ‘5 Reasons’ was more of a thoughtful late-night emotive tune, ‘You! Girl…x‘ is a more upfront and striking cut. The trancy feeling catches you from the first moment and doesn’t let go, with galloping hats and a groove that’s very reminiscent of the early 2000s club scene. And in this very strategic and crucial point of Blakey’s career, where he’s switching from simply singing to full-on composing and introducing new sounds to his name, we sat down and had a little chat. This is, for you all, the one and only Blakey. I wanted to make something speedy so got inspired by that Casso – Prada energy. Got a trancy groove going with synths that I quite liked and then the melodies came out pretty quick so built it around that. It actually had quite a few incarnations before landing where it did quite short and succinct. I had full verses for it that ended up getting chopped out and focused on repeating the chorus – more like a dance tune. Wanted to try something high impact with no fat on it – I think this is a pretty lean track. Coming from the singer songwriter world, I’m having to learn to push away from making stuff too songy-verse-chorusy and this was a good challenge in doing that – less can very much be more. So Blakey started very much in the singer/songwriter producer space and had success in that world. I’ve been moving into more electronic stuff over the past 6 months or so. My first foray into it was this tune ‘Ta Ta Ta’, which now has nearly 1 million streams. This world feels more natural to me – I’m always at club nights around London / in the culture, and around mates’ houses mixing tunes and messing around with vinyl – it’s an ever-evolving journey. I’m moving a little all over the place musically at the moment ,but I’m hoping people will stick it out for the transition. I guess one of my USP’s is being a bit of a shapeshifter at the moment. It will all make sense soon, I hope people just stick around for the transformation. This might sound counterintuitive, but that no one actually really cares about the kind of music you make, as long as you think it’s good. What I mean by that is – we can get so lost in our own heads about how our music will be received – which is important but most people actually don’t care as much as you do – so if you change things around, change styles, try new stuff – people wont judge you for that, they wont actually care, they just want to hear music that they like, and if you can do that then you’re doing something right. Impossible to know and a scary question. I’m into biohacking – so maybe running a water fasting retreat or something. Or maybe I’d be a chef.[Q&A] Blakey Goes Club Mode On New Striking Song, ‘You! Girl…x’
‘You! Girl…x’
Q&A With Blakey
What’s the story behind ‘You! Girl…x’? How was it born?
How would you describe the Blakey project for those who don’t know you yet?
What’s one thing music has brought you that surprised you for the good?
What would you be doing if you weren’t in music? What does a parallel universe Blakey look like?
