Tei Shi knows you’re mad.
The 34-year-old Canadian-Colombian singer-songwriter supreme has been serving up genre-blurring sonic excellence for over a decade now ever since 2013’s Saudade, and she’s only continuing to hone her craft.
On Friday (May 2), the singer returned with a new single called “Drop Dead” – and yes, it’s surely the best song about being (drop dead) gorgeous and/or beautiful since Britney did it back in 2011.
The song, which follows the lonesome and dreamy ballad “Best Be Leaving,” came along with the announcement of her fourth studio album Make believe I make believe, due out later this summer, which she crafted with frequent collaborators Noah Beresin and Tommy English.
“‘Drop Dead’ is a song to the haters!” she says in a statement.
“We all have them, and sometimes the call is coming from inside the house as they say…I channeled some personal betrayals into this one, and it also came from revisiting some of my early relationship dynamics where I felt I had to dim my shine for someone else. I wanted the song to be an unabashed celebration of that shine we all carry, that pride and confidence within us that is at times stronger than others, and kind of poke fun at the idea of jealousy.”
The song’s distorted beats and twinkling, ’80s-esque synths will burrow in your brain quickly…if the taunting lyrics don’t get under your skin first.
“You’re mad, unhinged because your boyfriend likes me / What’s his name again?” (Pairs well with Annie‘s “I Know UR Girlfriend Hates Me.”)
“Make believe I make believe was made during a one-week retreat on Vancouver Island last fall, with collaborators Noah Beresin and Tommy English. With the support of the British Columbia provincial government, I was able to rent out an amazing studio with built-in accommodation in the middle of the stunning BC woods. It gave me the chance to just write and record non-stop as much as I could with Noah and Tommy — something that’s quite hard to do financially as an independent artist. We’ve been working on the production and helping the album come to life since,” she says of the upcoming project. (A government doing anything helpful. Can you imagine?)
“Because of the grant support, I was brought home in a way, to where I grew up for a lot of my life, to create this album. As a result, the songs are really a dive into where my mind and my subconscious were during those days, which were surrounded by visiting home and seeing old family and friends. There was a lot boiling up in me, especially in the space since my last album Valerie, that was able to come out as one big stream in the span of a week really. This is the first album I’ve made that has had no outside voices or pressure whatsoever involved in the making of it. No label, no manager, no one interrupting the process or holding the purse strings. I think you can feel that transition in the music and I’m excited that what came out of it is a collection of songs that captures a really big range of emotions and is very versatile, touching lightly on a multitude of different influences from Canadiana to Neo-perreo.”
She’ll be performing two headlining shows at Constellation Room in Santa Ana on May 15 and at Pappy & Harriet’s in Joshua Tree on May 16. Click here for tickets.
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Photo Credit: Danica Robinson
