Chicago-based artist Gia Margaret releases ‘Good Friend,’ the second single/video from her new album, Singing, out April 24th via Jagjaguwar. Following the “beautiful” (NPR Music) lead single, ‘Everyone Around Me Dancing,’ ‘Good Friend’ is an album highlight recorded with Frou Frou’s Guy Sigsworth, who helped Margaret unify a spree of disparate ideas. Among many other things, the track includes a Gregorian chant by ILĀ and turntable scratches.
Reflecting on the track, Margaret says: “I wrote ‘Good Friend’ in late 2019, after my first bigger US tour. I remember that it felt like glimpse of what my next album could be. It was fun and light in a way I hadn’t yet expressed with music. Little did I know, my next album(s) would be a result of cancelled tours and uncertain feelings about the future. I unearthed this song when I needed lightness in my creative process while recording ‘Singing’. It reminds me of what my good friends bring to my life during the worst of it. (And that music can be a good friend too.) It was produced by Guy Sigsworth and myself and a product of all things nostalgic to me. A little nod to the late 90s and my everlasting appreciation for weaving Gregorian Chant into pop music.”
Watch the Video for ‘Good Friend’
Every artist has to discover their voice. Gia Margaret didn’t find herself until she lost hers. With a vocal injury that kept her from singing for years, she developed other musical languages, mastering the grammar of an intricate, homey form of ambient music pioneered by Ernest Hood and perfected by The Books. The two largely instrumental albums the Chicago pianist and composer made at that time—2020’s Mia Gargaret and 2023’s Romantic Piano—allowed her to lose herself in the emotional possibilities of pure sound. Now, her physical voice healed and her artistic voice honed, she comes full circle with Singing, her first vocal album since 2018’s There’s Always Glimmer.
“There was a time when I really didn’t know if I would sing again. So once I healed, there was a lot of internal pressure to come back strong,” Margaret says. “I didn’t know who I was anymore. So it felt like beginning again, and reconnecting with these very old, old parts of myself.”
Singing was recorded in London, Eau Claire, and Chicago in 2024 and 2025, alongside Sigsworth, David Bazan, Amy Millan, Deb Talan, Kurt Vile, and Sean Carey. Margaret’s longtime collaborator Doug Saltzman plays on and co-produces much of the record. “A lot of me meeting some of these collaborators (now my friends) fell completely into my lap,” she reflects. “Almost as if they could hear something in me that I’m certain was influenced by them in the first place.” But, as she says, all of her attempts to open her music to other artists “did lead me back to myself, because I realized I really do like producing. I felt like I was missing out by not exploring those things on my own.”
Gia Margaret is always singing. Every note of this album sings a warm requiem to her past selves; every layer sings her future self into being. Led by soft piano lines that fall like breath on glass, the music on Singing evidences the same jeweller’s sensitivity to detail that she developed in her silence.
