Each week we'll take you 'Behind the Beats' to learn more about the artists that play on our airwaves. This week we’re sitting down with one of 2020’s “Breakout Artist” finalists, London Thor to chat about her new single and what’s been happening during this challenging year.
You’ve just released your third single, titled “Trust” to Smooth Jazz radio. Tell us about the inspiration behind this tune.
“Trust” was really inspired by my own personal experiences in past relationships. Like a lot of people, I’ve always had a hard time trusting that I am enough in a relationship, and especially even more so when that relationship is a great one, I almost feel like my automatic response is to believe that it is too good to be true. So, “Trust” is almost a cautionary tale that fear and suspicion can be huge relationship killers.
In the midst of the pandemic, you released a very poignant music video for your single “Place Like This”. Tell us about your inspiration and the process of shooting a music video during a pandemic.
The music video for Place Like This went through many different forms before we finally decided what to shoot. What I saw in my head was a very clean and simple video, getting most of its emotions from very honest acting and images. Due to the spike in covid cases at the time of the music video shoot we had to scrap concepts that involved people being maskless and in a small indoor space, this eliminated the original “party” concept but left us with a really interesting idea to bend the meaning of the song to fit the state of the world today. I was able to include many close friends and my family members in the video which to me made it even more powerful and beautiful.
…and you released your EP “Cinematic Love”…
Yeah, “Cinematic Love” was a project completely and thought up completely during the pandemic. It started with just a couple songs I collaborated on with producer Billy Lefler because we both had some free time in the middle of the pandemic and then quickly turned into an entire ep.
A few of your songs have garnered a lot of attention in the EDM world. How did you connect with that ‘world’?
I started off working on EDM songs when I was 15. I wrote a couple of demos for a DJ friend of mine and it just so happened that one of the demos was “Hands” and it got picked up by Gareth Emery. After that just started building relationships in that world and collecting more projects as they come along.
“Hands” is such a great tune. That was a few years back, right?
Yes! “Hands” was the very first EDM song I had that was released, I was seventeen when I wrote it. It was also the first song I wrote and performed on that got radio airplay.
Now that things are opening up, do you have any live gigs planned? If so, where can we see you?
Currently I do not have any plans for live gigs, but I am definitely looking forward to getting to work on scheduling some. I’m hoping to get back to my old stomping ground at Hotel Cafe sometime in the near future.
Check out London Thor's latest single online.