Boombox Blitz: Alanna Royale cast vibrant, bodacious Nashville minds in ‘I Know’

Welcome to Boombox Blitz, an artist spotlight series showcasing overlooked singers, songwriters and musicians who are quietly taking over the world.

If you’re lucky, you’ll live a long and happy life, scattered with both the mammoth and miniscule. If you’re even luckier, you’ll be able to do so as your most authentic and truthful self. Alanna Royale, a big band-influenced pop outfit out of Nashville, have come to the conclusion that life really isn’t worth living otherwise. Their rhythmic new single called “I Know” is a prowling number and trimmed with a brassy, sassy horn section. Front-woman Alanna Quinn-Broadus’ voice is of relentless savagery, feathered and gently sweeping across a ripened landscape of plucky modernisms. “You’ve changed your mind a million times,” she sighs, breathless, while her eyes remain steely and fierce.

Rounded out by guitarist Jared Colby, drummer Matt Snow and bassist Gabriel Golden, Alanna Royale are a mighty embodiment of the current pop renaissance happening in Music City, which has always been hard to define, despite the obvious country and Americana roots. But Quinn-Broadus’ commanding gaze onscreen, especially framed in the band’s accompanying “I Know” visual stream, positions them as a force as bone-crushing as a hurricane whipping its extensions up and down the east coast. Armed with many of Nashville’s finest creatives, the video ⎯⎯ directed by Quinn-Broads and Jason Lee Denton ⎯⎯ celebrates not only various veins of creation, honoring the city’s core strengths, but the many body shapes that make up the greater world itself.

“I Know” is the first release for Alanna Royale in four years, following 2014’s full-player, Achilles. So, you can probably imagine how wholly special and regarded this moment really is. “In that time, we had to figure who we were as a band, as musicians. We hit pause on ourselves and went back to the beginning to focus on the songs, the sound and the look,” says Quinn-Broadus, who storms the screen with intoxicating vigor. “So, for this song to be as monumental as it was for us, the video had to hit that mark, too.”

The concept is fairly straightforward, spotlighting the song’s grooves with loose-y, goose-y choreography. The band aimed “to bring together Nashville-based performers, of all backgrounds and artistic avenues, who use their feminine bodies and energies to create and execute that art. We cast circus performers, burlesque dancers, drag queens, musicians and performance artists to bring their varying talents, bodies and looks to the mix and the result was perfection,” explains Quinn-Broadus, whose instant connection with co-director Denton results in a vital escape for the viewer. “He listens to artists in a way that marries our sound to his eye. He heard me when I spoke, and he knows what this music looks like. He has since become one of my most trusted artistic conspirators.”

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