It takes two to tango “Pirouette.” When Zola Simone was holed up in her dorm at New York University last fall, a zippy ditty came to her: “She don’t dance around it / Don’t do no pirouetting.” With a hook in place, the Boston-raised pop artist quickly found her new creation twirling to life — until it came time to pen a second verse, and her lyricism suddenly fell out of its turn.
Determined to maintain the song’s momentum, Simone dialed Tomas, a fellow student at The Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music. With her another melody-minded pop artist in the room, the budding tune became “Pirouette,” a euphoric traipse through summer flings. The pair dropped the new single last week (July 28) alongside a sped-up version that escalates the narrative’s giddy buzz. “I ain’t thinkin’ ’bout anything else but us,” Simone and Tomas sing together on the chorus, seemingly dizzy with infatuation.
“Me and Tomas booked an edit suite at our schools studios and we worked on the [second] verse together as well as the pre-chorus,” Simone explains to Vanyaland. “Tomas writes lyrics the old fashioned way — with a pen and paper, something I took note of. Overall we only had that one session, we finished writing the song and recorded all the vocals before I sent it off to my producer to be mixed and further produced… We both suggested ideas for lyrics and we both added on to each others’ ideas with feedback or alternate lyrics.”
Get into the duo’s groove below.