Canadian artist Kira Isabella’s new album, “Caffeine & Big Dreams,” became available for pre-order this week, and with incredibly strong lead releases like “Gone Enough” and “Quarterback,” we can’t wait to hear it. Isabella has an incredibly expressive voice, a personality that is both bold and charming, and a lead-off single with a message.
“Quarterback,” the first single from “Caffeine & Big Dreams” and the first push to US markets, is a lyrical force that refuses to apologize for the uncomfortable theme it discusses. The protagonist is invited out with the quarterback of the football team, who she shares her first time with only to discover pictures of it online. The hook highlights the predicament society places her in: “He was the quarterback / he smiled at her, imagine that / who you gonna blame, the star of the game? Or the no name girl in the freshman class.”
“Initially it was about this girl who sort of needed a quarterback in her life,” says Marti Dodson, who co-wrote the song with Bobby Hamrick and Rivers Rutherford and sings back-up vocals on the track and several others on the album. “But we were talking about the news, and these kids, how they’re doing this stuff and videotaping it, and they don’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with it. It’s crazy that we’ve gotten to a place in our society where they’re doing that and they’re so comfortable with sharing it online. So we started making the song about that. We were a little nervous about it. But we wrote it pretty quickly after that.”
Isabella delivers the track with conviction, and her signature vocals are expressive, simultaneously strong, delicate, and even sassy on lines such as the sarcastic, “he lied to her, imagine that.”
“Caffeine & Big Dreams” hits shelves October 14th. Catch Isabella on her website, Facebook, and Twitter, and learn more about Dodson, Hamrick, and Rutherford.