Mykki Blanco is an artist revered for their fearless ability to evolve, placing their creative exploration at the forefront of their career. Now, they share their new single “Your Love Was a Gift” featuring the striking vocals of Diana Gordon and Sam Buck. 

Following recent highlight “Family Ties” a collaboration with Micheal Stipe, Mykki’s new single sees them once again exemplifying the extent of their artistic evolution. “I’m not a secret don’t keep me / locked away / I’m worthy of love / don’t you feel that, don’t you feel that way….” sings Gordon, as her voice deep with emotional candor drapes across distorted guitars riffs and sussurating symbols. 

A song of two halves, “Your Love Was a Gift” – produced by Falty DL (Drew Lustman) and also featuring the vocal talents of rising country star Sam Buck – finds Mykki taking a deliberate backseat with their raspy, experimental vocal pirouetting from background to foreground, flitting between moments of the dextrous rapper we’ve come to know and their newly honed vocal flair. Almost as an echo but never in the shadows, Buck’s soft croon swoops in at the end spinning the song from a shoegaze grunge-bop to a campfire lullaby.   

“‘Your Love Was a Gift’ is for me” mentions Mykki. “If not the most honest, it’s the most beautiful song I’ve ever written. The idea for the song comes from my own wins and losses in the game of love and it’s a story of coming of age as much as coming to terms in adulthood with feeling unloved, yearning to be loved and yearning to be understood.”

Explaining further Mykki describes, “Diana Gordon is a standout songwriter and singer and I’m crafting this song with her as the lead vocal and myself taking the more experimental backseat was a deliberate choice. Diana doesn’t just glimmer on this song, she shines, she owns it she makes the heartfelt lyrics I wrote come alive.”

Last year’s impressive mini-album Broken Heart and Beauty Sleep released via Transgressive Records, set a precedent for Mykki and saw them step into a chapter close to their creative apex, beginning to fully realize their limitless potential. It also exemplified the creative synergy collaborator Falty DL and Mykki have found since they began working together in 2018. 

Photo Courtesy: Paulo Sutch