Yola Releases ‘Stand For Myself’ Single

Singer-songwriter Yola shared the title track for her upcoming Stand For Myself album along with an accompanying video. Yola’s sophomore full-length studio album arrives through Easy Eye Sound on July 30.

Dan Auerbach, Hannah V and Natalie Hemby co-wrote “Stand For Myself” with Yola. Auerbach also produced the 12-track LP as he did for 2019’s Walk Through Fire. Yola was backed on the album by a rhythm section featuring bassist Nick Movshon and drummer Aaron Frazer.

“Stand For Myself” features the legendary The McCrary Sisters on backing vocals. “The song’s protagonist ‘token,’ has been shrinking themselves to fit into the narrative of another’s making, but it becomes clear that shrinking is pointless,” Yola said regarding the title track of her new LP. “This song is about a celebration of being awake from the nightmare supremacist paradigm. Truly alive, awake and eyes finally wide open and trained on your path to self actualisation. You are thinking freely and working on undoing the mental programming that has made you live in fear. It is about standing for ourselves throughout our lives and real change coming when we challenge our thinking. This is who I’ve always been in music and in life. There was a little hiatus where I got brainwashed out of my own majesty, but a bitch is back.”

Allister Ann directed the video for the song. “My school years were during the 90s and 00s, and Missy Elliott’s videos were always aesthetically superior to me,” Yola explained. “I feel that the video is set in the antechamber to freedom. The feeling of escaping something truly oppressive and heading towards an unknown with a sense of hope and choice you haven’t felt in a long time. We all have the capacity to go through this process in our own minds, I kinda look like a superhero at times, but I’m not. I’m just a person trying to be free.”

Watch Yola’s “Stand For Myself” video below: