Lealani
Indie electronic singer-songwriter, real cool sophisticated girl
Lealani is an indie electronic singer-songwriter & producer from southern California. While I'm not quite sure just how old she is, she did just graduate from California College of the Arts in May of 2021… so, early to mid 20s, I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
She grew up in Pomona, CA as an only child, started producing music when she was 12, and in high school had a 1-girl surf-punk band called The Pezheads, releasing one album in 2015.
Her debut album as "Lealani" came out in 2019 — titled Fantastic Planet. Apparently, there was some drama surrounding the original release, but I wasn't able to find a detailed explanation. The only real insight into what happened I found in an interview: a vague word of advice to other artists about owning all their stuff. Not sure what that was about, but apparently the album was removed from all streaming platforms for a bit and was re-released in 2020. I can only guess she didn't like the record deal (%, rights, etc), or had some samples that couldn't be used, or something like that. Who knows? I didn't discover her until the spring of 2021, so I completely missed all that and can only make assumptions based on what's left online — which isn't much.
I was willing to take down all of my music because it meant so much to me that everything I made I owned.... There was a certain company that gave me a hard time about some things — make sure what’s yours is yours!
In July of 2021 she released a follow-up album that was a collaboration with someone called "SnakeFoot" (never heard of them and can't really find any info)... I say "collaboration", but I don't hear much of her production on that album. It really sounds more like "Lealani sings over some SnakeFoot tracks", which I guess is still technically a collab... but you get my point. And really, with Snakefoot's production she kinda sounded too Bjork-y. It also lacked the soul/personality of her first album. Honestly, I wasn't a fan for the most part, though I still liked a couple tracks.
Earlier this year (2022) she released the single “Killer Bee” labeled as a "demo". Not sure if that's because it's an actual work-in-progress, or just a throwaway track she liked enough to share. I hope it's the latter, because while it *is* fun and sonically more interesting than her previous release, I was reminded of other artists just a little too much... like Wu-Tang & Crystal Castles got in a car wreck and had a lovechild who listened to Tobacco & Billie Holiday.
It's currently her most popular track on Spotify — nearly 2x'ing the number of plays of her 2nd most popular song — so, probably no point in it being a work-in-progress type of "demo" anyway. I just hope that its popularity doesn’t have too much influence on future material. It’s a fun little track that really shouldn’t be her most popular song (like, by a lot), but... it is what it is.
All that said, it shouldn't come as a surprise that 70% of the playlist for this article is made up of songs from Fantastic Planet. It's not that her other releases are bad, they just remind me of other artists too much. And IMO they just aren't “Lealani” the way Fantastic Planet is.
It also shouldn't come as surprise that I skipped right over the most-heavily promoted songs from this album. I get why “Floating” is popular, but... all I hear is a GAP or Old Navy commercial. Not into it. "I'm Not Perfect"? Annoying. Miniscule? True, she's 4'11", but... meh.
On the other hand: Lonely Stars, The Night, and Slip Slaughtered *are* perfect, IMO. Little House, Long Stroll, and Broken are all great, too.
On a personal note: she does seem to have pretty good taste in music. While reading up on her I noticed that she name-dropped several artists I also like: Ty Segall , Death Grips, Venetian Snares & Portishead.
She's still young, so she definitely has time to grow and mature her style, but — to be perfectly honest — it might be difficult to top Fantastic Planet. From the album art to the music videos, and the music itself, she captured and distilled something that not all artists can do more than once — if ever. Everything came together perfectly. Even if she never releases another album, I think she can and should be proud of her contribution to the musical landscape of the late 2010s and early 2020s.