Riva Taylor Releases her Debut Album
To celebrate the launch of her debut album 'This Woman's Heart' Britain's best kept musical secret Riva Taylor will be treating fans to a sneak peek of her new Music via a live stream across all her social media channels with all proceeds donated to Mind UK.
'This Woman's Heart' will be released worldwide in two halves throughout 2020, beginning with ‘1’ on 27th March 2020. It features Riva's vocal-driven power pop, influenced by soulful female icons like Annie Lennox, Kate Bush and Adele.
"This album is very much about a woman’s journey through her twenties, shedding some innocence, learning important life lessons and emerging as a very different person at the back end," Riva [VIDEO]explains.
"With age, I've opened up more; this first half is the dark half, the dark heart, and is written about the trials and tribulations of those wilderness years.”
This compilation encapsulates a story not just of personal devastation and recovery, but of a resilient woman who is finally finding herself through her music. It traces her journey over the past decade into womanhood and tells the listener of how a previous relationship tore her apart, and how she put herself back together. “The second half is the resolved heart, the happier heart. It’s about broken hearts but bright futures, that there is an outcome and it can be positive.” Says Riva.
The seven songs that make up the first of the two releases – as inventive as they are evocative - could barely be more rent with heartbreak and introspection.
This Woman's Heart .1 Track List
1.'Jealous'
2.'Chaos Killed The Thrill'
3.'My Mouth'
4.'This Woman's Heart'
5.'Let Go Too Soon'
6.'Raining Tears'
7.Running at Walls
EDM-infused track 'Jealous' finds her struggling with feeling envious of her ex's strength in moving on with a new partner. "I had a few problems at school with some of my peers, just after I landed my first deal, so jealousy is something I wanted to stay away from when naming this song, but it felt right.
It's a horrible thing to deal with."
The deceptively upbeat synth-pop of 'Chaos Killed The Thrill ', was written in just 45 minutes in Berlin and dissects how old baggage can destroy a couple who "were never a whole piece of the jigsaw anyway."
'My Mouth' is a track that appeared on Elton John's Beats 1 radio show Rocket Hour, and Elton declared he 'loved it.' “It was revamped for the album and encapsulates the things you can't say in a relationship: "I'm not happy, why am I feeling this way?
I was in a relationship that I knew was wrong, and I didn't feel comfortable."
The centrepiece is the title track, 'This Woman's Heart', which was eighteen months in the making and is a bold, beautiful statement of Riva's artistic maturity. "It's me identifying as a woman," she says. "I always found it difficult to say I was a woman because being a little girl with a big voice was part of my artistic identity for so long. Even in the years leading up to finding Riva Taylor, I still felt very young, like I was fighting my past while trying to navigate my way through a new chapter in music and find my real identity."
The regretful, Latin-flecked 'Let Go Too Soon' opens up with a recording of something Riva said to her therapist: "Do you ever fully let go, do you ever fully forget?".
This song reflects her state of heartbreak and uncertainty during a writing trip in a place Riva identifies as her "second home", Los Angeles.
'Raining Tears' is pure hip-hop/gospel desolation penned by songwriting collaborator and hitmaker Jamie Hartman ('Human' Rag n' Bone Man, 'Hold Me While You Wait', Lewis Capaldi): "It's one of the most honest, in the moment, desperate songs, where there isn't an 'everything's going to be fine', it's a 'I have just had my heart ripped out'" moment.
Smooth pop ballad 'Running At Walls' explores the fruitlessness of keeping a fading summertime affair alive into winter. Written with Starsailor frontman James Walsh "exactly a year ago at the beginning of September, using walls as a metaphor for the repeat problems and obstacles in a relationship."
Riva Taylor has spent the past six years rebuilding and remoulding herself to become a mature and compelling artist in her own right.
It was her experiences during her childhood career touring the world under the wings of superstars, that have laid the solid foundations for her authentic songwriting today. This woman's heart is wide open. Sink in
