Day for Night Artist Spotlight: Kimbra
Written by Yuliana Bourdin on December 12, 2017
I remember there was a time when “Somebody That I Used to Know” was all that would play anywhere you went. The Gotye and Kimbra single was released in 2012 and became multi-platinum pretty fast. It then won the duo “Record of the Year” and “Best Pop Duo/Group Performance” awards at the 55th Annual Grammy Awards. That brought Kimbra the platform that she has been using to create some incredible fusions of jazzy R&B, pop, and dance.
Kimbra Lee Johnson was born in New Zealand in 1990 and at 12 she started to learn how to play guitar and has been musically involved since. By her teens, she was performing live, which caught the attention of Forum 5 – an Australian record label. After signing with them, Kimbra released her first single “Settle Down” in 2010 and was followed by “I Look to You” with Miami Horror that same year. Her first album Vows was released mid-2011 and scored high on the charts in the Down Under and in the U.S.
In 2013 she was performing at various events like SNL, St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival and Rock in Rio Festival. Additionally, she started to recruit artists for her next album The Golden Echo (2014), which included the likes of Flying Lotus, Thundercat, John Legend, Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys and others. The first single off of the album was “90s Music”, which got plenty of positive reviews for its fluidity in genres. The second single “Miracles” also got her praise for channeling a disco-funk vibe that embodied the wide-ranging album.
Currently, Kimbra lives in New York City and a couple months ago announced her new album Primal Heart through email, which is set to drop sometime mid-2018. In 2016 she released what was presumed to be the single called “Sweet Relief” but this past September after the personalized email announcement, Kimbra released “Everybody Knows” – the official lead single off the album – which was produced by Nelly Furtado and John Congleton. Catch her at Day for Night music festival in Houston Dec. 15-17 to hopefully hear some sneak peaks of the new album. Tickets are available here.
