Adia Victoria has shared new single “Ain’t Killed Me Yet” which is out today across all DSPs via Canvasback. It marks her first new music since the release of her critically acclaimed new album A Southern Gothic which was released in the fall. The song was written as the blues companion to Lucille Clifton’s poem “Won’t You Celebrate With Me” where she famously writes:  

“come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.” 

With “Ain’t Killed Me Yet” Adia answers Clifton’s—and so many Black Blueswomen before her–call and challenge to celebrate just because, she says, “we ain’t dead yet.” She continues: 

“There was little to celebrate in life the Spring of 2020 but living itself. With the live music industry shuttered to a close I was forced to find a new way to live. I took a job at Amazon to pay the bills and on the way to the warehouse for a red-eye 10-hour shift I considered my dilemma. Racing through empty streets at 2 am, trying to keep to steps ahead of a virus I couldn’t make sense of, life was lived in barest of immediacy–one breath to the next. That Spring I would end every journal entry with “Life ain’t killed me yet.”  

“Ain’t Killed Me Yet” is the blues existentialism pared down to its bones. It is the irreverent celebration of those who meet life on their own terms. When the future is uncertain, the immediacy of the pleasures and vagrancies of the now is all that matters. I wrote “Ain’t Killed Me Yet” while behind the wheel on the way to work in a warehouse where death was a real possibility. The blues anchored me in the now so that I could not only survive but I could give the finger, and blow smoke in the face of my fear and anxiety.

A Southern Gothic landed on numerous year-end lists including Good Morning America who noted, “A Southern Gothic sounds like something from another century, making it one of the most unusually stirring records of the year,” 

On the album, Adia continues her journey through the conflicts of the American South and the troubling resonance of its past. Sonically, the album is full of frequent juxtaposition. It is equal parts historical montage and modern prophesy, dark and light, love and loathing. The 11 tracks are the musical embodiment of the relationship that so many people, especially Black women, have with the South. The album was executive produced by T Bone Burnett and co-produced by Adia and Mason Hickman. A Southern Gothic features guest appearances by addition Jason Isbell, Margo Price, Matt Berninger, and Kyshona Armstrong.

Photo Courtesy: Huy Nguyen