British indie-pop band Pale Waves have released their newest single “She’s My Religion” – a non-typical love letter that sees frontwoman Heather Baron-Gracie embracing her sexuality to represent a real, queer relationship without hiding behind the cliches of oversexualization or playful experimentation. Listen to the song below and click HERE pre-order/pre-save the album, Who Am I?, out February 12, 2021, via Dirty Hit.
“’She’s My Religion’ isn’t the standard or typical love song,” Heather admits, reflecting her desire to write the single. “Society depicts the dark sides to a person as unloveable and tends to only focus on the positive sides. I believe to love someone and their entirety creates a love that is freeing and truthful. I also wanted to give my fans a song to find themselves in. I wish I had a song like this when I was a young girl trying to find herself in the world.”
Who Am I? – the follow-up to the band’s 2018 debut album My Mind Makes Noises which amassed over 70 million streams worldwide, opens up a bold new chapter for Pale Waves. Heather’s songwriting holds the last few years of her life up to the light, reflecting on her own mental health and growing pains – depression, distraction, and feelings of darkness – but also her experience of falling in love and becoming more open about her sexuality, emerging with a newfound clarity and optimism.
Who Am I? acts as the Pale Waves manifesto, inspiring inclusivity, self-discovery, and the notion of being whoever the hell you want to be. On the making of the album, Heather says “for me, music and art is for people not to feel so alone and isolated. I want to be that person my fans look up to and find comfort in.”
Who Am I? was recorded primarily in Los Angeles alongside producer Rich Costey (Muse, Foo Fighters, Sigur Rós), before the Coronavirus lockdown forced the making of the album to go virtual, with Heather remaining in LA and the rest of the band returning home to record their parts in their bedrooms, sending them back to LA to be added into the record.