Support our efforts, sign up to a full membership!
(Start for free)
Register or login with just your e-mail address
Pop / Rock 27/03/2020

Bright Light Bright Light Builds An 80s Disco Haven On New LP 'Fun City'

Hot Songs Around The World

Water
Tyla
306 entries in 20 charts
Stick Season
Noah Kahan
313 entries in 19 charts
Houdini
Dua Lipa
285 entries in 26 charts
Strangers
Kenya Grace
442 entries in 24 charts
Lovin On Me
Jack Harlow
293 entries in 22 charts
Popular
Weeknd, Playboi Carti & Madonna
266 entries in 18 charts
Lose Control
Teddy Swims
316 entries in 25 charts
Beautiful Things
Benson Boone
159 entries in 24 charts
Si No Estas
Inigo Quintero
283 entries in 17 charts
Greedy
Tate McRae
621 entries in 28 charts
Unwritten
Natasha Bedingfield
291 entries in 22 charts
Anti-Hero
Taylor Swift
615 entries in 23 charts
Cruel Summer
Taylor Swift
572 entries in 20 charts
Snooze
SZA
223 entries in 13 charts
New York, NY (Top40 Charts) On September 18, Bright Light Bright Light (the performance alias of Welsh international pop star Rod Thomas) will open the gates to 'Fun City', his meticulously crafted collection of 80s-inspired disco-pop that he built as a statement of perseverance during restless times. To be released on his own label YSKWN! (in partnership with Megaforce Records and The Orchard) and to include collaborations with a yet-to-be-announced "who's who" of LGBTQ+ icons and musical trailblazers, 'Fun City' is his love letter to marginalized communities who feel scared or forgotten.

To celebrate the album announce, he has dropped first single "This Was My House", a sugar-rush of dancefloor pop featuring Madonna's longtime backing vocalist duo Niki Haris and Donna De Lory. The song was produced by Initial Talk who has been delighting throwback production fans with his recent reimaginings of Dua Lipa, Janet Jackson and many other pop artists. Originally written as an banner-waving ode to LGBTQ+ safe spaces, the song should ring universally true to individuals worldwide who are struggling to find peace and refuge during the current political climate and public health situation. Paper Magazine praised the "Studio 54-worthy single" saying "it's not every day that we get a perfect disco song."

"The song is about how the safe spaces for the LGBTQ+ community have been fractured of late with a palpable uprising of anti-LGBTQ+ and xenophobic rhetoric, which is scarily even more real now as these public spaces are closed for the foreseeable future due to the COVID-19 pandemic," said Bright Light Bright Light about the origins and evolution of the track. "LGBTQ+ people - most notably trans women - are attacked and killed at an alarming rate, and so this song is a fierce statement that every living person deserves to feel safe in the place they call home, whoever you may be."

While creating 'Fun City', Bright Light Bright Light was sonically inspired by the legacy of iconic LGBTQ+ artists like Sylvester, Erasure, Scissor Sisters and Hercules & Love Affair, and to capture the spirit of the queer trailblazers before him, he recorded the vocals for the album on the empty dancefloor of East Village gay club Bedlam. He hopes 'Fun City' will examine the ways marginalized people stay strong, focused and creative through times of social and political hardships. The album title itself is a historical reference to a quote said by NYC mayor John V. Lindsay who on his first day in office in 1966, amidst a crippling transit strike, said "I still think it's a fun city."

"The idea of a deeply flawed but still beautiful world is what the album is about, so I thought it was a fitting image for how the LGBTQ+ world has had to find laughter and solidarity in face of prejudice through history, dancing through pain and living for love in spite of hate," said Bright Light Bright Light.

Bright Light Bright Light has been a staple of the international LGBTQ+ music scene for over ten years, having released three prior albums and touring as both a solo artist and has support alongside pop royalty like Elton John, Cher, Erasure, Ellie Goulding and The Scissor Sisters. He also collaborated with Elton on his 2016 banger "All In The Name" which he also performed with the music legend on The Graham Norton Show.

For the past four years he has curated, hosted and served as the DJ for regular afternoon dance parties (which he affectionately calls the "Romy & Michele's Saturday Afternoon Tea Dance") at Manhattan's Club Cumming and Brooklyn's C'Mon Everybody. Aside from using his music as a powerful platform for equality, he has also actively fundraised for The Trevor Project, Ali Forney Center, Hetrick-Martin Institute, ACLU, and Elton John AIDS Foundation over the years.






Most read news of the week


© 2001-2024
top40-charts.com (S4)
about | site map
contact | privacy
Page gen. in 0.5955169 secs // 4 () queries in 0.0043091773986816 secs


live