New Marcus King music is on the way, folks.
The Grammy-nominated blues-rocker gave the world a sneak peek at his forthcoming album Mood Swings with the brand new song “Delilah,” which he premiered last week on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Dressed to thrill in a black velvet suit, hat, and red-tinted sunglasses, King sat behind a white grand piano and soulfully delivered the first half of the new tune before joining his band on stage and shredding a solo against horns and impeccable harmonies… even getting shouts of praise from the audience before the song was over.
“It’s a coming-of-age tale about learning how to love and how to allow yourself to stay still long enough to be loved,” King said in comments about the tune, according to Relix Magazine.
“There was no hiding behind the guitar at all,” he revealed of this new album.
The project ushers in a new era in King’s already skyrocketing career. Teaming up with legendary producer Rick Rubin for the project, King fully lets his guard down for what might be the most intimate and reflective collection of songs he’s ever released. Pre-production on the project came at a particularly turbulent time in King’s life, where he reveals that substance abuse and depression had nearly taken over his life and put him in a mode of self-destruction that could have easily turned fatal.
But working with Rubin throughout the pandemic, both remotely and at Rubin’s California studio Shangri-La, proved to be not only the perfect medicine for King, but also the perfect environment to lay a solid foundation for the tone of the album…even with COVID-19 looming in the background.
“As terrible as it was, it was a good opportunity to isolate oneself and just start writing,” King told Variety’s Chris Willman in an exclusive interview.
“And Rick’s involvement there was kind of pushing me deeper and deeper into myself to where I felt like I was kind of mining within the caverns of my own soul, as it were. The course of the record kind of spans from the end of a relationship through the aftermath of the ending of that relationship. And it’s also, on the other hand, about my personal relationship with mental health and how it affected my behavior in past relationships, and what he helped me capture by pushing me further into myself than I’d ever been.”
Mood Swings hits shelves and digital retailers on April 5th.