2 weeks ago
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I'm People is set to arrive three years after the release of Hiss Golden Messenger's tenth album Jump For Joy, and sees MC Taylor explore the condition of being in America in 2026, asking the question: "What other choice do we have than to be hopeful?"
Today, "In The Middle Of It" arrives as the first preview of the upcoming record, alongside a lyric video. The track was written in a room at the El Rey Court hotel, and Taylor refers to it as a "Santa Fe song", explaining his inspiration as: "Highway 10 through the desert towns, Los Angeles to El Paso … Art Bell's Coast to Coast droning from a bunker in the middle of Nevada. Ghosts and UFOs and vagabonds. The engine sings out over the long lightning fields. In the middle of it: the country, the story, the relationships.”
I'm People was written across New Mexico, California, and North Carolina, recorded at Dreamland in Woodstock, New York, and co-produced by Taylor and Josh Kaufman, engineered by Chris Boerner and Gillian Pelkonen, and mixed and mastered by D. James Goodwin.
The album also features instrumental contributions from Taylor, Kaufman, JT Bates, Cameron Ralston, Bruce Hornsby, Sam Beam, Marcus King, Sara Watkins, Amy Helm, Matt Douglas, Eric D. Johnson, and Griff and Taylor Goldsmith.
Discussing the composition of I'm People, Taylor explains: “I wanted the record to feel the way that upstate place feels, deep in the pocket, a place of poetry, earth and sky and mountains. A place where a lot of my favorite music has come from."
Detailing the songs, he adds: “The songs on I'm People are about running towards and away from things, about reasonable and realistic hope and expectations, about having babies, getting older, love and lust and luck and music. They are songs about solitude and heartbreak and poverty of the spirit, and maybe community as some kind of antidote for these particular types of sicknesses.
"Shedding old skin. Mystery as a beautiful necessity. My grandmother Lucy's Cadillac, filled with cigarette smoke, Conway Twitty singing ‘Slow Hand.’ The lightning fields outside Santa Rosa, NM, midnight. Late nights drinking wine, running wild, bondage, fealty, devotion, seeing and being seen, owning and being owned. My wife, my children, summertime in the mountains, wild roses climbing the fence, a peaceful mind, rummaging through scrap heaps of the heart, breaking and making and breaking again. To dust. Truth, lies, magic, faith.”
I'm People artwork
I'm People tracklist
"In The Middle Of It"
"Who You Gonna Run To?"
"Shaky Eyes"
"Mercy Ave"
"I’m People"
"Seneca (Time Is A Mother, Baby)"
"Last Orders"
"Gabriel"
"Heavy World"
"Alright"
"Spirit Cat"
"Depends on the River"
English (US) · 