Premiere: Olivia Henry spins an empowered web with new single, ‘In My Touch’

2019 is the year women don’t give a fuck. They’re reclaiming the narrative and employing deep-seated traumas into staggering artwork. Femininity is fearlessness coated in unpolished vulnerability. A Los Angeles native, soul-pop singer-songwriter Olivia Henry wastes no time in shattering the glass ceiling with her new single “In My Touch,” a bewitching torch-ballad with which she rediscovers her true power. “Don’t fuck with me / ‘Cause I don’t got the time to get free,” she sings, both in scorn and temptation, swinging from the pendulum of soul, pop and blues. “And I just want to / Feel you deeply in my touch.”

Henry is altogether mesmeric. Her creamy, velvet vocal cords are wrapped inside imposing layers of piano and string-work, a balancing act of sound and emotion. ” I know I am an animal to you / And you’re a hunter / And I like that, too / No need to give me a head start / ‘Cause I want to get caught,” she confronts, boldly embracing her primal instincts and eyeing her prey with ravenous fangs. Later, she concedes that time is running out, prompting inexorable urgency, “This is your last chance / You’ve got one shot / Don’t have another day to waste.”

“In My Touch” (officially out Monday) tickles the senses and sees Henry manifest in her womanhood as an unchained, commandeering spirit. “[This song] evokes a kind of raw feminine sexual power: a strength that I felt while writing it,” she tells B-Sides & Badlands. “I wanted to inspire a fierceness, a desire, a sexual need and anticipation for the next phase of life.”

Having grown up on the west coast, and with early roots writing poetry, Henry possesses a golden touch in hook-ware and songcraft. With “In My Touch,” a sample of her forthcoming debut LP, produced by Doug Makuta, she not only bathes in life’s beauteous ecstasy, recharging her self-reliance and steel-suited confidence, but escapes into the moonlight’s soft shimmer for a stimulating assembly. She also boasts classical vocal training and studies in jazz and musical theatre, so the song’s core drive of fantastical dramatics don’t come as too much of a shock. In fact, she beckons the listener down a sparkling pathway of voyeuristic theatre ⏤ not one of exploit but of empowerment.

Listen below:

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