On that song’s chorus, she accompanies an armada of synth blasts with heaving sighs, as if to hack up the offending memories-“a past that couldn’t last”-from her lungs, as well as her mind. Nao’s beseeching tones imbue every line with romantic defiance, even when, as on breakout single “ Bad Blood,” the lost love under her microscope is platonic. Paul collaboration, reboots the theme of romantic redemption, firing out a feminist takedown in the dialect of funk expressionism. Are they hard to recognize?” Following track “ Trophy,” a new A.K. “Buried all my feelings, I’m withholding,” she sings, fretfully. On “In the Morning,” she acts the part of a lover too polite to say it’s over. She sings with the weight of lessons learned: “I’m wise and I’m older,” a line from “Fool to Love,” is a rare instance of personal exposition, but the sentiment was already implied. On For All We Know, Nao autopsies various relationships-with friends, lovers, outgrown versions of herself-and, having decided what went wrong, calmly takes down the perpetrators.
Instead, her music inhabits the arena of high-stakes R&B, where women’s voices are dominant, acrobatic, and impossible for unsympathetic listeners to tune out. Her view of modern love, delivered in a tone that oscillates between euphoria and self-examination, feels like a rebuff to digital-era romance, where the possibilities of perma-communication (the mute, the de-friend, the ghosting) have fostered a banal revolution in breakup politics.
Where others have found transcendence by rejecting slinky, summertime beats- FKA twigs’ alien ambiguity, Grace Acladna’s lucid soul nightmares, Night Slugs’ scatty dream-grime production for Kelela-Nao, while raised on grime and garage, owes little to any discernible London lineage. In the absence of lyrical biography, Nao’s hook is her voice-she sings like a giddy angel sent to live out a dream of pop stardom-which puts her out of step with recent R&B permutations cultivated in England. The details are vague-it’s possible the tormentor is her own self-doubt-but the sense of an inspired, forcible overcoming is unmistakeable. Recent single “Fool to Love,” which appears on her debut album For All We Know, opens at the flash point of a doomed relationship, then takes us back through the “mindless games” and slain insecurities that helped forge her escape. Her empire has expanded-after the single, she formed Little Tokyo Recordings to release a handful of EPs-as has her songwriting. Paul-featuring debut single, “So Good,” arrived within months of that first songwriting attempt, creating her template for emotionally precise pop that gives away little about its creator. Since penning her first song in 2013, Nao has come close to mastering a particular strand of funky, high-gloss R&B.
However, since the Carpenters had not appeared in a film, they were barred from performing at the awards at their request, the song was performed by friend Petula Clark. The song's ensuing success allowed the song to earn an Academy Award for Best Original Song of 1971. Richard's ear caught the song "For All We Know" and he immediately requested a demo be ready for his return to the states.
Following a pressing touring and recording schedule, it was suggested after a show in Toronto that the duo relax and watch a movie said film happened to be " Lovers and Other Strangers". As " We've Only Just Begun" had smashed and hit its peak, Karen and Richard were having difficulty selecting a follow-up single - which was eagerly awaited by the label and radio stations across the country.