Yuna: Duet with Usher is like music to my ears
BY GORDON KHOTHE STAR
Joint effort: Yuna collaborated with Usher on her new song ‘Crush’.
PETALING JAYA: For her upcoming album, Malaysian songstress Yuna has help from some international big names in the music industry.
Top-notch producers such as David Foster and DJ Premier worked their magic on her soon-to-be-released album Chapters.
But for Yuna, none can match the thrill of working with R&B superstar Usher, who duets with her in the track Crush.
“When I was working on this album I really wanted to collaborate with a couple of artistes of my choice,” the Los Angeles-based singer said in an e-mail interview.
“Crush was a song I wrote and I thought it needed a male vocal. The only person I had in mind was Usher. It was him or nobody else.”
So Yuna contacted Usher and got him to listen to the song.
Much to her delight, Usher agreed to lend his vocals to it.
“Usher was very dedicated ... he ended up singing the lyrics that I wrote, which was pretty amazing.
“His willingness to work with emerging artistes is inspirational,” Yuna said, adding that the American superstar was “humble and down to earth in person”.
Another artiste who appears on Chapters is 27-year-old American singer/songwriter Jhene Aiko.
Chapters is the much-anticipated follow-up to Yuna’s 2013 release Nocturnal.
“It took me two years to write and record the whole album, and find the right fit,” the 29-year-old said.
“I probably wrote, like, 30 songs. It was tiring but it was a lot of fun. You learn so much about yourself during the process.”
Yuna incorporates pop and R&B in her new album, a departure from her indie roots.
“The inspiration behind the whole album is the R&B-pop genre that was really huge in the 1990s and early 2000.
“Growing up, I listened to a lot of R&B artistes like Lauryn Hill, Aaliyah, TLC, Brandy and even Usher.
“I just thought that it would be cool to be able to make those kind of records again,” she said about Chapters, which will be released on May 20.
Yuna is currently busy rehearsing for a 15-date tour in the United States which will cover cities like Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles, New York City and Philadelphia.
She promises to be back in Malaysia to promote her album and do some shows after her music engagements in the United States and Europe.
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