Alaska native Quinn Christopherson shares his newest soul-bearing single “Celine,” out on Play It Again Sam / PIAS. The new track follows the release of the intimate and transfixing “Thanks” and Quinn joining The Wild Hearts Tour supporting indie greats Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen and Julien Baker on a national run of shows.

The anthemic “Celine” is Quinn’s most pop-sounding offering to date— earnest vocals glide atop dreamy synths as Quinn shares a heart-warming story about his mom and her shining karaoke moment. Says Quinn, “The smallest moments can be as important as you perceive them to be. When my mom came back from karaoke saying they told her she sounded just like Celine, it was everything to her – she believed it with her whole heart. Her truth was as important in that moment as anything else in the world.” 

The official video is just as heart-warming as the track and features Christopherson’s real mom owning the stage and singing her heart out at their local karaoke bar— just like Celine. It’s a powerful representation of freeing oneself from their own shackles.

Quinn’s electrifying and important debut, Write Your Name in Pink, squares up to this quandary again and again: How do you own the parts of your identity that make you who you are while also acknowledging that they are all mutable and that you are ever-new, always in flux? Each of these dozen arcing and engrossing pop wonderlands reveals another facet of who Quinn has been, is now, or might still be—a daughter, a son, a kid, an uncle, a spouse, a bandleader, a singer in search of songs that remind we are all capable of evolving in fundamental ways. Maybe that’s his mom, Tawny, becoming Celine Dion for a night down at the local karaoke joint during (what else?) “Celine.” And, of course, it’s Quinn himself becoming enough of an adult to long for the relative innocence of his difficult teenager years, as he does during the guileless “2005.” All these songs are wrought from assorted pains of the past, notes on hardships given to ecstatic melody; together, they point to the possibility of what’s to come. 

Photo Courtesy: Emma Sheffer