Shura has today premiered a brand new song, ‘Just Once’. This follows breakout debut track ‘Touch’, which picked up over a million plays across Youtube and Soundcloud, went Top 3 on Hype Machine and received early spins from Radio 1. Shura will announce further remix and video plans for ‘Just Once’ shortly, as well as details of her first official live shows (a set at Iceland’s Airwaves Festival has been confirmed for November, alongside the likes of Jungle, The War on Drugs and Caribou).
Warm, affecting and universal, ‘Touch’ was quickly hailed as one of the standout new songs of the year, and hinted at the arrival of a major new talent. On ‘Just Once’, Shura confirms that promise. It’s a more upbeat but no less melancholic mix of Janet Jackson with the intricate productions of Warpaint, or the effortless groove of early Madonna – all carried by Shura’s velvet-like vocals. Lyrically, ‘Just Once’ is in many ways a prequel to the break-up blog-anthem that was ‘Touch’: it’s a snapshot of a relationship which isn’t working, and imagines being swept up with someone new, where you can be whoever you want to be. Full of sensuality and self-doubt – “If you get my name wrong / I won’t get pissed off / ‘Cos I wish I was somebody else” – Shura again achieves the immediately-recognisable, ghost-like quality of a shared romantic experience: ‘Just Once’ is that dual sensation of fresh attraction, mixed with the memory of meeting past loves.
Read our previous feature on Shura’s track, ‘Touch’
