Out now via Young
Stream / Buy – Mid Air: romy.ffm.to/midair
Praise for Mid Air
“One of the year’s best pop records” – Wall Street Journal
“Extraordinary, winning songs from The xx vocalist” – NME ★★★★★
“An eleven strong homage to an unforgettable era, but it’s Romy’s autobiographical candour that adds a depth beyond the record’s inarguable ecstasy” – DIY Magazine ★★★★½
“An album that could soundtrack the height of a party or the following day’s hangover-fuelled existential crisis, which is a rare thing” – The Guardian ★★★★☆
“Romy Madley Croft emerges boldly and brightly, female pronouns everywhere, full tilt into piano driven house music in all its euphoric, bittersweet glory” – Mojo
“A euphoric ode to the dancefloor” – Uncut
Romy, the UK singer, songwriter and DJ who previously released three acclaimed albums with her band The xx, today releases her highly-anticipated debut solo album. Titled Mid Air, it’s an album about celebration, sanctuary and salvation on the dance floor. It’s an album that deals with love, grief, relationships, identity and sexuality and is a love letter to the queer clubs where Romy found community and connection. It’s a coming-out album in a way, although she came out in her personal life a long time ago, but it’s also a coming-through album – through grief and heartache, towards euphoria.
Mid Air sees Romy working alongside producers Fred again.. Stuart Price, as well as her bandmate Jamie xx on recent single ‘Enjoy Your Life‘. Also featuring the singles ‘Strong‘, ‘Loveher‘ and ‘The Sea‘, Mid Air is set to unify dancefloors, distilling Romy’s love of club classics and classic song writing and finding the sweet spot – like much of Romy’s favourite music – between euphoria, escapism, sadness and melancholy.
Released on CD, digital and multiple coloured vinyl formats.
Stream / Buy – Mid Air: romy.ffm.to/midair
Romy – ‘The Sea’ (Official Video)
Stream / Download: https://romy.ffm.to/
Romy – ‘LoveHer’ (Official video)
Stream / Download: https://romy.ffm.
Romy – ‘Enjoy Your Life’ (Official Video)
Stream / Download: https://romy.ffm.to/
Romy – ‘Strong’ ft. Fred again… (Official Video)
Stream / Download: https://romy.ffm.to/
It took Romy a while to land on the album title Mid Air. Yet the words seemed to encapsulate the references, emotions, thoughts and complexities of the record in a way that no other could. The sense of a suspended or liminal moment as you take a leap and dive into something. That distinct moment of weightlessness when someone sweeps you off your feet in a new relationship when you’re falling in love. And the otherworldly freedom of the club, the out of body experience of being lifted out of whatever you’re feeling if only for a night. Escape, trance, euphoria, release. “Mid Air is an album about celebration, sanctuary and salvation on the dance floor,” in Romy’s own words. “It’s an album that deals with love, grief, relationships, identity and sexuality. It’s a love letter to the queer clubs where I’ve found community and connection.”
Making the album, her first solo project, has been a process of getting to know herself outside of The xx, as well as having the time to fall in love and immersing herself in the adventure and inspiration that can bring. “It’s a coming-out album in a way, although I came out in my personal life a long time ago, but I guess it’s also a coming-through album – through grief and heartache, towards euphoria.”
There is a moment, an interlude, a few tracks into Mid Air when Romy’s voice ambiently sings the lyric “it hit me in mid air”. The realisation takes us straight into the song ‘Enjoy Your Life‘, the album’s second single, which arrives like an epiphany. “My mother says to me ‘enjoy your life’” sings the cult musician Beverly Glenn-Copeland in the chorus, a sample taken from his record ‘La Vita‘. When Romy first heard the phrase it knocked her sideways – a reminder in the depths of grief that life is short and to live it to the full. To seek pleasure, connection, love. If the verses articulate the hardest of times, following the loss of her parents, the chorus is an uplifting repose. Pain and joy dance together. The type of song Romy loves best – what she calls ”emotional music to dance to” – songs like Bronski Beat’s ‘Smalltown Boy‘ or Robyn’s ‘Dancing On My Own‘. This is the kind of music that inspired Mid Air, the kind of music that unites people in clubs, and especially queer clubs.
Romy first started DJing in London queer clubs as a teenager, and views Mid Air as a homecoming to this time, a pop dance music album that conjures the spaces where she first fell in love with the genre and its power to move people. “I wanted to make music that is a love letter to those clubs and experiences, that feels uplifting and generous, not dark or challenging. I think that desire goes back to when I started DJing with club classics in queer clubs in London, the feeling you get from playing a song that everyone knows and loves, that makes people joyful” The result is an album that feels transportive; snatches of sounds from outside clubs and bars (listen for Oliver Sim calling Romy’s name at her hen party, a sample taken from a video on her phone). Then, a journey inside to the dancefloor.
The fact the album was largely conceived in lockdown, when Romy was missing clubs, made this impulse to create an album that could find a home in a club all the more important. “I’m definitely referencing a 2000s pop-dance that feels nostalgic to me, these kind of trance pop bangers that sometimes verge on the edge of being cheesy are my favourite and I wanted to embrace that.” Working on the album’s production with Fred Again.. and Stuart Price (who produced one of Romy’s favourite albums, Madonna’s Confessions on a Dancefloor), and close friend and collaborator Jamie xx on the track ‘Enjoy Your Life‘, ensured the perfect balance of emotion and danceability. Although Romy might not have predicted that such an album would ever come to fruition when she first began writing with Fred in 2018.
“I started writing songs for other people, in between the second and third The xx albums, to learn about writing big pop music, it felt like a lower pressure way to write music outside of The xx, but I wasn’t confident enough back then to think I could write a solo album.” It was a journey that took time, with Romy writing for artists including Dua Lipa, Kelela and King Princess in the interim. During this period, Romy and Fred were paired to write songs for other people, but their fast friendship and musical connection sparked something new. “After writing a few songs genuinely thinking, I wonder who can this be for?!” Romy and Fred wrote the song ‘Loveher‘ – a declarative and dancey pop song about the intimacy of falling in love with a woman. “Fred asked me, who could this be for and I tentatively said… maybe me?” That was the beginning of Mid Air.
Finding the confidence to sing about her own sexuality by using female pronouns in her lyrics was a way to feel connected to the solo project, as was writing from a personal place about a new relationship. When Romy was 29, she re-met someone she had loved before – some might say the one that got away. “Both of us were fresh out of long-term relationships that lasted most of our twenties, we began a friendship that turned into a romance, into a marriage. I don’t think either of us saw that coming.” Mid Air explores the different stages; old love becoming new love, the intimacy, the challenges and the euphoria of falling hard. The infectious chorus line “I don’t care anymore, I think I’m in love with her” from ‘She’s On My Mind’ perhaps encapsulates this side of Mid Air best. No torturous coming out stories and romances, or hiding and shame, instead she chooses to transform feelings of introspection and loneliness into those that are unashamed, upbeat and hopeful.
Several of the songs on the album are about navigating visibility, identity and the queer community: “Being open about my sexuality lyrically hasn’t always felt possible and it felt vital and liberating to me to be visible by using “she” and “her” pronouns. I’ve always sought out queer representation in the mainstream – I think that visibility can help with acceptance but it still feel like there’s a long way to go” she says. Writing this way felt like a relief, an experience that allowed for the rest of the album to be personal and direct. “With The xx, my story was always part of the bigger story, and the pronouns were always consciously, “I” or “We” or “They” because we were creating the music together and it made sense to keep things vague. I also wasn’t ready then. This album is, at its core, a positive and proud queer love story,” says Romy. That was an intentional decision: “If people hear this album, register that it’s and a woman singing about loving a woman is not a big deal, the album has done what I wanted.”
It naturally followed for Romy to collaborate on the videos for the first two singles from Mid Air (‘Strong‘ and ‘Enjoy Your Life‘) with her wife, the filmmaker and photographer Vic Lentaigne. “The album also leans into difficult times and the process of overcoming them. From a young age I’ve been familiar with grief, with both my parents passing away before I was 21, and I’ve been on a journey of acknowledging loss and learning how to move through it,” explains Romy. For this reason, the video for ‘Strong‘ features her embracing her cousin who also experienced grief at a young age. While the ‘Enjoy Your Life‘ video features intimate fly-on-the-wall moments with Romy shot on film by Vic; friends, a holiday in Ibiza, tours and DJ sets, alongside footage of Romy’s mother. “Vic remembered that my aunty had this footage of my mum as an air hostess, so we went round to look at it again. I felt like I was watching it for the first time. Both the videos are very personal in a way that I think only she could have captured”
Taking us through the highs and lows – of a night out, of a relationship, of grief and healing – Mid Air ultimately emerges into a place of optimism. The final track ‘She’s on My Mind‘, deliberately places last as a reference to the end of the night disco song that might have played in iconic queer clubs like Paradise Garage, bodies dancing separately coming together. It’s an embodied ending to an album that celebrates the particular but ephemeral moments of ecstasy that can only be found though dance music. Or as Romy puts it: “The feeling of community in clubs that has provided an escape from the realities of the world. I may not be the life and soul of any party but being in the atmosphere of a club, observing and connecting – that makes me feel less alone, and more alive.”
ROMY Mid Air (high res artwork here)
1. Loveher
2. Weightless
3. The Sea
4. One Last Try
5. DMC
6. Strong ft. Fred Again..
7. Twice
8. Did I
9. Mid Air ft. Beverly Glenn-Copeland
10. Enjoy Your Life
11. She’s on My Mind
ROMY
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