next level at 40: 🌸TIWA SAVAGE’s CELIA🌸 album

Love the new album. Perfect sunshine vibes.

would like to take back any reservations i had about the tiwa x sam smith collab, the song bangs.

there's a few songs competing to be my fav, temptation, glory, dangerous love, bombay, etc. but for now i think koroba takes the cake.

hey now:

Hey guys! watch my premiere for Tiny Desk in 15 mins. I’ll be in the comments as well. This is the YouTube page https://t.co/GqhTe1JYDz pic.twitter.com/dykOJTMAwC

— Tiwa Savage ⚔️ (@TiwaSavage) August 31, 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S53BdCfsjw

Songs in the Key of Celia!

live version of Dangerous Love is really great. I'm in camp "the backing vocals are good", but hearing Tiwa work around them so delicately in this stripped back style is very welcome

ftr, I am also in camp "the backing vocals are good." I'm not sure how that got misconstrued. If my calling them "weird" connotes "bad" then change it to "unusual, striking, unexpected"—frankly, they're my favorite part of the song now.

I can't watch that TD now, but I'm looking forward to it. Also, not sure I ever raved over "One" in public, but that song crept up on me to be a favorite. I don't think I've ever heard "Eminado" though, exited!

yeah I love 'One'. It feels iconic somehow.

'Eminado' is god tier Tiwa. I like a lot of her stuff and the new album sounds great but that's the one I always go back to.

I’ve grown to really love this amapiano remix (with a new vocal by Tiwa) of ”Dangerous Love” by South African producers DJ Ganyani and De Mogul SA. The castanet accents on the beat are a great touch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOF5YOPGZ8E

(while I applaud the fact that remixes are finally (and I mean finally!) becoming more common in afropop, I have to admit appreciating this and other** pop jams in an amapiano context takes some getting used to for me.

**Joeboy’s “Call” and DJ Neptune’s “Nobody” are other current Naija hits that have gotten this treatment)

wow the tiny desk performance is incredible

I'm fully onboard with this. Tiwa finally found a way to translate her considerable skills and appeal into a full length album and now I'm in love.

Reviews for Celia in Nigeria have not exactly been uniformly positive:

This one, in the Native, is pretty jubilant...

...but this one not so much...

...and ouch, this one doesn’t pull its punches.
(I had missed most of this apparent ‘woke Tiwa’ (re-)branding)

As for its chart performance: streaming-wise it’s doing much worse than the Burna, Fireboy and Adekunle Gold albums (which all came out earlier too). All of Twice As Tall’s 15 tracks are outstreaming the most popular Tiwa track, “Koroba”. The least popular one? “Glory” :-(

They really have the whole thing backwards...

Burna had a HUGE media push in the US, so that at least isn't too surprising. I haven't gotten more than a few tracks into Fireboy and have only heard the singles from AG, so not sure what my own comparison would be (I'm v doubtful I would end up liking either as much though). I played Celia for my partner last night and it took a few songs before she asked me what it was...it might be a bit too subtle for its own good in terms of grabbing streaming listeners.

That Pulse review was amusingly batshit -- I completely lost track of what his perspective was, it almost felt like a panel review of wildly conflicting opinions. And then ending by calling "Celia's Song" (which I liked more on second listen but still has quite a lot of hallelujahs in it for my taste) the best track was *chef's kiss*

to be clear, I was talking about streaming numbers for Nigeria!

Oh gotcha!

NY Times critic Jon Pareles interviews her about new album, her life (in Nigeria, UK, and Us), her divorce, stint at Berklee College of Music, and songwriting(including as a hired songwriter in Los Angeles) and marketing

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/07/arts/music/tiwa-savage-celia.html

Savage wrote and recorded “Celia” the way many Western pop stars make albums: She convened a songwriting camp. She booked eight rooms for 15 days at the Oriental Hotel in Lagos, where producers and musicians could come and go, bouncing ideas off one another as Savage supervised, selected tracks and came up with top lines. “Just put your heart into it, and let’s have fun,” she told them.

thanx for that!

I just called to say Pakalamisi

“nakupenda”

thanks beastcrawl for this. I've probably played this album more than anything else this year, it's gorgeous

my pleasure, mafu12 (you can call me breastcrawl btw:-)

what’s your favourite track? I went from “Glory” to “FWMM” to currently, unquestionably, “Pakalamisi”.

whoops lol.. sorry, breastcrawl. The whole thing rules (even the "interlude") but I'll say "Save My Life"

latest video is for "Ole" with Naira Marley:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7rcfEboa7g

meanwhile, I'm still all about "Pakalamisi". make it happen, Tiwa!

this album's incredible, so glad I finally got to it. thanks for the thread!

Time has Celia as one of its top 10 albums of the year:

https://time.com/5915313/best-albums-2020/

new ep out, apparently!

new single “Stamina” with Ayra Starr and Young Jonn, produced by Magicsticks of Asake fame;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90uaFhWaT_Y

(mainly because I want SNA to be as colourful as possible)