Johanna Warren Returns with Single 'Islamorada'
The new track features contributions from Chris St Hilaire of The Black Keys and David Rothon of Marissa Nadler.
Singer/songwriter and producer Johanna Warren returns September 17th with 'Islamorada,' a new single released via Soul Selects on all streaming platforms.
Islamorada is a portrait of desire stripped of all irony and self-protection. It unfolds as a stream of unabashedly earnest declarations: 'I would give you my whole heart / I would give you the whole damn world,' Warren sings. At the center of the song is a gut-wrenching plea: 'Give me a chance / To show you that I'm worth it,' Warren sings with a disarming lack of cool.
Warren says she almost didn't record this song, out of concern that this sentiment might be perceived as 'disempowered.' But that very path of logic is what ultimately compelled her to release it. 'It feels weirdly radical,' says Warren, 'to be an adult woman in 2026 simply saying I want you, I love you, I would take care of you, please let me try. In this time of mass disenchantment and dissociation, I think there's power in owning your desire, and taking the risk of expressing it—which, yeah, puts you in a vulnerable position, because you might not get what you want, or you might get called cringe.'
The musical arrangement of Islamorada mirrors the vulnerability of the lyrics. Warren's voice and acoustic guitar form a shamelessly naked foundation. Around it, electric guitarist Chris St Hilaire (The Black Keys) creates a constellation of woozy spaceship-like sounds that give the feeling of being an astronaut looking back at Earth from a great distance. David Rothon's (Marissa Nadler) warm pedal-steel swells pull the song back toward earth, offering a familiar human gravity beneath the extraterrestrial isolation. The combined effect of these production choices creates a wobbly cocktail of cosmic vastness and intense intimacy: the astronaut looking down on the whole world and realizing there is only one person she wants to reach.
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