We Speak Music
Jessica Wilde calls on women everywhere to remember their power with new mantra ‘Phenomenal Woman’.
Acclaimed South London artist Jessica Wilde is calling on women everywhere to remember their power and embrace the healing strength of sisterhood with her new single ‘Phenomenal Woman’, out now, following a sold out launch night at Stormzy’s iconic ‘House Party’ venue.
Wilde has come a long way since her 2022 debut album ‘Sober, wasted, wasted sober’, which instilled her real-life experiences of overcoming addiction into twelve gritty, soulful alt-pop bangers. Her 2024 follow up ‘Teach Me How To Love’ continued Wilde’s commitment to embodying true self love and authenticity and refined her musical sound and healing journey further. Along the way, Wilde has gained valuable experiences from collaborating with heavyweights including Rudimental, Todd Terry, Grammy-winner Kizzo (Jon Batiste) and James Newman (writer of Rudimental’s Brit Award-winning “Waiting All Night”) and now, with ‘Phenomenal Woman’, Wilde is fully becoming what she always promised to be.
Produced by Tom Maine (WULU, Lex Amore), Wilde is joined by dancers Simran Hunjun and Yan Yin Yung (choreographer), for the hypnotic video for the track, which is laid out like an epic 90’s video game, calling in a nostalgic essence of those classics, Tekken and Tomb Raider, but where the women unite instead of fight one another. The visuals are striking, styling giving street but earthy, and Wilde adds yet another string to her multi-faceted talents as a singer, rapper, producer, DJ and now showing her dancer persona too. Taking inspiration from naughties girl bands such as the iconic – Destinies Child. Musically, the track is a new wave anthem that’s raw yet soulful and hard to place in a box. There’s more space for contemplation than Wilde’s previous works and the grooves feel almost tighter in the way that sometimes less is more. Tribal infused rhythms and a deep sub bass underpin soothing waves of Jessica’s soul searing vocals and flecks of jazzy piano samples sweep through like past struggles fading away and the epiphany of a spiritual awakening and self-realization becoming so clear at the forefront.
Wilde has been making her mark in recent years, not only with her music gaining attention from the likes of BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 2, BBC 6 Music, Clash, Complex, Wonderland and The Independent and being featured on editorial playlists across Spotify, Apple, Pandora and Tidal, but with her platform ‘PxSSY PWR’, which she created to elevate exceptional underground female talent through events and community building. Jessica has also now created a ‘Phenomenal Woman’ IG series, with which she has been encouraging women to share ‘What it means to them to be a phenomenal woman’, along with their own videos, which has seen a wide range of videos being created by women across the world so far.
Known for her high-voltage energy and magnetic stage presence, Wilde has lit up Glastonbury, Soul Town Festival, Jazz Cafe, Ronnie Scotts, Riviera Maya Jazz Fest (Mexico), and Bospop (Netherlands) where she opened for Nile Rodgers and curated a PxSSY PWR takeover on the Noirganica stage for Secret Garden Party Festival. ‘Phenomenal Woman’ follows Wilde’s collab with PRVNA on the track ‘En Mi Alma’ which she performed with her at BBC Introducing On The River this year and Wilde’s recent single ‘Love Like This’ which was made Record of the week by DJ Spoony on BBC Radio 2’s ‘Good Groove’ show.
The video for ‘Phenomenal Woman’ has already been picking up VEVO playlist adds and has gained over 14K views, so it’s safe to say that Jessica Wilde ready to fully flourish into this vivid new chapter of her career and to keep on knocking down barriers as an independent artist and advocate for female empowerment.
“I see Phenomenal Woman as not just a song but a mantra for all women to remember how phenomenal we are”, Wilde explains.
Michele Ducci has unveiled the second single, ‘Woman Like You’, from his forthcoming album and animated film ‘Snail in the Clouds’.
‘Woman Like You’ pairs bright distorted electric guitar with an electronic drumbeat, adding in Ducci’s soulful vocals and a catchy uplifting chorus with Letizia Mandoleisi’s sweet vocal harmonies. A vintage organ pedalboard operated by Ducci simultaneously generates chords, bass and rhythm, like a one-man band. Shane Kennedy (Girl in the Year Above) joins in on guitar. Simon Milner (Is Tropical, Ysing) recorded and produced the track at his 4am Studios in London.
The album and film tell the story of a planet called ‘Snail’, inhabited by hybrids – primarily a mixture between scorpions, snails and humans – who lead a life according to the style of Pythagoras, devoted to music. There is also a cloud man named Agostos, a writer of musical operettas, who together with a talking smoke machine called Doctor Subtilis, begins to kill all hybrids, targeting in particular the hybrid musician Diodoros and his band, in an effort to steal the ark of melodies, an ancient ship that allows the whole planet to survive with music and joy.
The video for the single, created and animated by Ducci and Mandoleisi, delves further into the realm of planet ‘Snail’:
Says Ducci, “The ark of melodies, after various attempts, finally starts to work and fly in the planet Snail, while the shady Doc. Sub. and Agostos, with their platoon of soldiers made of foggy smoke, spy the miracle, planning to steal the ark for their evil and tyrannical purposes.”
About the track, Michele says, “I wrote this song for my love Letizia. Love seen from the mind is the sound we make. Sound is the love of matter.
We used a Technics synthesizer organ from a flea market. I tried to find a mood that was right for the song and I started using the bass of the pedal board together with the synth and the drums, and it was magical to hear the song reveal itself all coming from a single instrument. Leti was singing with me and we recorded everything live in one shot. Then we made Shane do the guitar flight, as if he came out of the window. The idea was to maintain disproportions, guitar thrust and synth drum thinness a la Haroumi Hosono, so as to create an estrangement, but naturally: it’s about how I listen, with close up something that captures me in its nuance as element of a larger orchestra somewhere. I’m glad we decided in the studio with Simon to use the layers of arrangement as the close-ups in the cinema; they look like strange enlargements that perch on parts of a mutated orchestra. I’m happy to come back with this love song at a time when everything seems to opt, even my labor in managing the flows of selfishness that have poured out on me while doing this album, for the sound of war. I’m here happy to be able to say that the sound of love always wins as did for me. Snail in the clouds is one of the most important works in my life and I am glad to start from pure love for this album that is my son.”
The album and full-length film will be released on the 5th of June on Monotreme Records.
Michele and Letizia’s previous musical short film, ‘The Great Book of Nature’, is an official selection for the 2026 Venice Shorts Film Festival.
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