Grammy-Winning Lady Rizo Debuts 'Hit of You' via BlackBook Magazine

Grammy Award winning cabaret chanteuse- Lady Rizo releases her first single "Hit of You" from her second studio album, Indigo, out August 18th, 2017 following her Joe's Pub residency show Red, White and Indigo in March. Known for transforming nightclub-pop into experiences that are more soulful, more theatrical, Indigo delivers passionate power ballads and catchy, upbeat tunes.

Indigo's first single, "Hit of You," contains percolating melody dabbling in a waltz, before crescendoing into a show-stopper that sounds like a Shirley Bassey deep cut. The song-about "the feeling of euphoria that you associate with the best lover or a really great audience"-features what she calls a "Lewis Carroll pitter-patter rap. That song feels like falling down a rabbit hole."

The superstar performer who has accumulated many accolades: naming Moby, Reggie Watts, and Yo-Yo Ma, as collaborators, the latter on his Songs of Joy & Peace album, which won a Grammy Award. She's received a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, a Time Out London theater award, and a 2013 London Cabaret Award. A composer who co-composed with Adam Rapp on his musical Los Angeles, Rizo has also penned theme songs for the Fuse network and E! Entertainment. All of which is to say: Our Lady of Perpetual Creativity is, by design, many things to many people.

"I love taking these beautiful, luxurious images or sounds and pressing them up to the very raw pain of existence. Making people feel alive-grand and giant one moment, yet intimate and vulnerable the next," says Rizo. "That's why I introduce myself as chanteuse, which Piaf described as someone who takes one song and makes a whole opera out of it. Many of my songs carry a kernel of mystery, and I hope my music makes listeners vibrate with that excitement."

Indigo features songs like "Under" an unlikely banger built around a boogaloo beat, one of its most eccentric offerings. The song came about after The Civilians theater company had asked Lady Rizo to write a song about a real-life couple who had sex in a coffin while being buried. The song attempts to answer the inevitable questions that arise: "What is the desire for that?" she asks. "Why do we want to feel sex and death together?"

"Sometimes the Sky's Too Bright" also came from a challenge. In this case, she was invited to collaborate on a Soho Theatre show in London about Dylan Thomas. She transforms his poem "Sometimes the Sky's Too Bright" into a haunting, beat-driven tune. "I think it's about the unbearable beauty of the world," Lady Rizo explains. "Like when you're in a very dark place, but it's a gorgeous day outside. And you wish clouds would roll in to match your mood."

Don't Miss a Music News Story
Sign up for all the news on the Spring season, discounts & more...