Adriana Spina - Still — AliveandGigging

Adriana Spina is a Scottish-Italian singer/songwriter, she will appeal to fans Sheryl Crow, Kathleen Edwards and Shawn Colvin.

Adriana's songs are honest and sparkling, and her live performances not quickly forgotten - raw and heartfelt in equal measure.

Often hard to categorise, Adriana’s sound is fiercely independent, having worked for over a decade to craft her blend of acoustic, Americana, folk and country, which is encapsulated in her most recent studio album Let Out The Dark.

Her latest single Still was inspired by a haiku challenge (a short form poem from Japan consisting of three short lines that do not rhyme) in her Sunday Songwriting Facebook Group.

The group was then set the task of writing a song based on their haikus which contained no more than twenty words and incorporated ‘found sound’ from their surroundings.

Adriana wrote and recorded Still at home, over the space of a couple of days, using exactly twenty words. Her vocals were recorded at 3am to capture the serenity of that particular time of night and she recorded the bird song from her back garden.

When asked her thoughts on Still, Adriana says:

Having put recording plans for my third album on hold due to the current pandemic, I wanted to use the space to maintain some creative momentum and delve into new writing approaches. I never expected this song to come from my little haiku, but when I wrote Still it felt like something just clicked and the track had a life wider than my home recording. Mark then took it to an even more special place. It was fantastic to work with both him and Boo to bring it all together.
I regularly find myself in my garden at dawn with my dog and love watching the light creep back into the sky. At no time is that stillness more intense than in the small hours and this is what I sought to capture. The writing and recording happened all at once, I wrote and recorded the verse before the chorus was written, it was a new and really organic process for me.
Despite being a significant stylistic departure for me, Still evokes a very specific time which I wanted to share. I hope my fans like it as much as I do.

Still was released on Friday 4 September, so how did those twenty words pan out (creeping,daylight, gold, teasing, feather, sky, be, still, my, love, there’s, time, colours, escape, night, fingertips, meeting, birdsong and lullaby), well my arithmetic may not be good but I only counted nineteen !!

Arithmetic aside, Adriana has turned those words into an absolute gorgeous ode to the break of day, painting exquisite pictures of the sunrise with a stunning melodic lullaby, it captures the wonderful palettes of colour that daybreak can bring as it flits between darkness disappearing and sunlight escaping.

I’m sure Still will evoke different memories to different people, it took me back to childhood and those early morning abandoned camping expeditions in a friends back garden as I wandered home.

It’s been a while since Adriana released new music but Still more than makes up for that, hopefully, we won’t have to wait so long for the next one.

Give Still a stream now:

https://open.spotify.com/album/4jCdSO7STqWYvpE9ImdBFz?si=PRQbOv8IQUWW8Afz84xHCQ

Watch the official video below (oh and don’t count the words):