- 2025-01-20
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MUSIC
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Victoria Canal Releases Debut Album “Slowly, It Dawns”
Spanish-American singer-songwriter Victoria Canal released her highly-anticipated debut album “Slowly, It Dawns” on January 17, 2025 via Parlophone Music.
The album comprises 12 songs, produced by Eg White, George Daniel, Kevin Farzad, Ryan Lerman, S. Carey, Tony Berg and Victoria Canal.
Written over the course of the past three years and recorded between London and Los Angeles.
The album is the culmination of a lifetime of musical knowledge, experimentation and a fearless approach to her craft.
Victoria Canal said of the album, “I'm trying to be honest and unapologetic about what I want to put out there, whether it's wholesome, sexy, loud, quiet, if I'm being femme or masc; I don't want to apologize for it.”
She continued, “Life does feel like the sun rising. You come into the world with very little clarity on the way things are - everything's a little hazy and confusing. Then, as you get older, your eyes adjust to what life is; it gets messy and complicated, then spiritual and expansive.”- Victoria Canal said, “I'm sitting in an airy, quiet Seattle living room right now with a cup of coffee, listening to the record in full at a very low volume. As I listen, I'm thinking about how many thousands of individual choices were made over the course of three years-what snare mic to use, who should play violin, who to take a baby song idea to, and so on-in the hopes of materializing the ideas and dreams knocking around in my head. In life, you make choices in the hopes that you'll be able to manipulate a certain outcome. But, the truth is, you never know where life is going to take you. Much like I never expected to be waking up away from my home on this day, so often the reality turns out to be different, more complex, and even greater than you could have ever imagined. That's how I feel about this music. It's not the album I imagined I'd make before making it, but listening to it now, it's even better than the hypothetical I've been working towards the last three years. Wherever this album meets you today, my hope is that helps you allow yourself to be as messy, chaotic, manic, depressy, flirty, moody, naive, and wise, as you need to be. We're all faking our way through it and figuring it out as we go. Let life dawn on you. Slowly.”
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Victoria Canal explained about some tracks for the album.
“June Baby”
“'June Baby' is about the thrill of an adolescent summer romance and marks the “first chapter of a new era, which will go places I've never gone before musically, so I'm just ready to get it out there and have some fun.”
“California Sober”
“I'm hopped up on the feeling of romance, and I'm more in my body than I've ever been. Culturally my family is a hodgepodge of Latino, Spanish and Southern heritage. Even though I grew up in Spain for many years, it took me a long time to embrace the magic in the music because I romanticised British and American artists. But that music is in me, generationally; I'm letting these parts of myself emerge that were fighting their way in.”
“Cake”
“It's 6am, you're still going on a night out and everything's gone a little too wonky... 'Cake' is the bottled up feeling of dreading (and therefore adamantly avoiding) going back to adult responsibilities, and indeed the crushing weight of the world. It's the desperate desire to hold onto the escape just a little bit longer, even as it starts to go sour. This song was such a joy to make, I fully let go into nihilist escapism & felt such catharsis in going absolutely nuts lol. This is my bond song, my radiohead moment, my 4am past-the-point-of-no-return all-nighter.”
“15%”
“This is the social anxiety, the existential doubt. Because when you're at the party, you think you're hot shit, and then when you're going home, you're like, 'Oh, did everybody actually hate me?'”
“Vauxhall”
“The hangxiety breeds resurrection. The bad feelings teach you something about yourself and about your life.”
“Black Swan”
“'Black Swan' came to me in a period of crushing comparison, perfectionism, and pretty steep low self-esteem. I wanted to untangle the feeling of wanting so deeply to be different to who I am at the core. For my enneagram girlies, this song is a 4, through and through.”
“swan song”
“The most special song of my life. it means so much to me because it's a loved one's last words, in a letter. I wrote it in my parents' basement one night.. I had the piano part rolling around in my head for a while but couldn't quite find the lyric. at the time I was dealing with the prospect of saying goodbye to a loved one, and weirdly enough, the tv show This Is Us helped me process so much… there's an episode where, unbeknownst to them, a father shares his last words with his son. that's when the lyrics hit me - I knew it had to be almost in the form of a letter. a father's last words. very proud of this one, written and produced by me with some Rob Moose magic and mix by Mark Elliott. as long as I am breathing, I know it's not too late to love.”
Photo by Nolan Knight - source : Apple Music
