“It’s a song celebrating individuality, self-transformation and the power that lies in living your truth—even when it brings ridicule and alienation,” says Gyasi, summing up “Sweet Thing,” the latest from his third studio LP, Here Comes The Good Part, available February 7 via Alive Naturalsound.
Individuality and self-transformation are recurring themes that drive the time-warped musical persona of the Nashville-based artist, whose fixation on Bowie, Lou Reed, T.Rex and the over-the-top theatricality of ’70s glam in general is pretty much a way of life. For an artsy, creative kid raised in rural West Virginia, reinvention seemed like the only way to survive.
“Growing up, I often felt the need to hide my unique self, and so I feel deeply for those on a similar journey,” he says.
“Sweet Thing” went through some changes in the writing process, helped along by Nashville songwriter Kaleb Thomas Jones. “It started as a riff I had for a while,” says Gyasi, a talented guitarist who spent two years at Boston’s Berklee School of Music before the brutal New England winters drove him off. “It took a while to figure out what the song wanted to be. But once I had the title, it flowed pretty easily from there.”
For the video, Gyasi returned to his high school in Hinton, W. Va. “The place was very stifling for me when I was younger,” he says. “To use it as the backdrop for a song about self-realization was a powerful juxtaposition for me—and a way to reclaim a place that mostly had negative associations for me in the past.”
We’re proud to premiere Gyasi’s “Sweet Thing” video.
—Hobart Rowland
See Gyasi live.
