Reviewing Goldie Luxe - 'Touch the Sky' - One To Watch for 2027!
The ugly duckling story has been told wrong for generations…
It is not a transformation story. Nothing about the duckling actually changes: the same creature that was dismissed and belittled and told it did not belong is present at the beginning and the end, unchanged except in context. What the story is actually about is the belated recognition of a true nature that was always there, simply surrounded by the wrong observers, evaluated by the wrong criteria, measured against standards that were never designed to account for what it actually was. It was not becoming something different. Everyone else was simply, finally, correctly identifying what had been there all along.
Goldie Luxe has understood this distinction with complete clarity, and 'Touch the Sky', out September 18th, is what that understanding sounds like when a self-described diamond-studded trans pop sensation sets it to music with the full force of her theatrical and creative intelligence. This is not an anthem about becoming. It is an anthem about being recognised for what you already are, which is simultaneously simpler and considerably more radical.
The song began on a stage rather than in a studio: written as a burlesque performance piece, a way of psyching herself up before stepping into the spotlight in a world that had not yet agreed she belonged there. That origin is entirely legible in the finished production, which Goldie developed with collaborator Sam Bierman drawing from the larger-than-life pop worlds of Britney Spears and Timbaland: electronic production built around synths, samples and programmed elements, deliberately and gloriously enormous, constructed for maximum impact in the largest possible space. Additional vocal work from Shannon Hunt and mastering from Randy Merrill complete a track that achieves the quality its creator describes as quintessentially Goldie: glamorous, theatrical and entirely refusing to moderate either.
A spoken-word section born from a live performance revelation, a feather fan sequence that needed more drama, transformed the track from a pop song into something closer to a theatrical declaration. Previous video 'Made in Italy' earned a Bronze Selection at the Berlin Music Video Awards. Second album The Swan, drawing from the R&B and hip-hop-infused pop of the nineties and 2000s, is in development.
The duckling narrative ends here. It ended a while ago. Goldie is building something considerably larger than what comes after.
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