Tafari Anthony has already released a string of stirring, soulful electro-pop tracks this year, and today he drops another. “No Good”—premiering below—shows the Toronto singer-songwriter delivering a soaring goodbye to an unhealthy relationship.
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“Now I’m standing here / Feeding obsession with crippling fear / But I love it dear,” Anthony sings in the track. “That’s why I had to leave / ‘Cause you’re no good for me.”
“This was one of those stream-of-consciousness moments,” says Anthony of the song’s conception. “I had just had a long week of going back and forth with this person and I guess it was weighing very heavy on my mind still. I remember I had woken up one morning in my apartment downtown Toronto, took my puppy Sammy out for our morning walk, came back in and sat down in front of my keyboard. Normally I turn on all the lights and get down to work. This day I decided to just have the little bit of light peeking from the windows.”
“The first thing I did was lay down the chords,” he continues, “just messing around until it was pulling at my heartstrings. The progression/sounds just started to make my body tingle. Usually I end up doing a mumble style track first to just get out any melodies and little tidbits of lyrics—that wasn’t the case on this song. I just started singing and the words and melody flowed out pretty much exactly as you hear them now. It’s almost like I was just the vessel to get the words and sounds out for someone else.”
At first, Anthony was suspect of how quickly the song came together. “Of course in true songwriter mode, I spent a long time feeling like I needed to analyze every lyric and placement in the song because it came too quickly,” he recalls. “Ultimately, very little was changed to what we hear today. Once I finally connected with Alexander Flockhart to produce the track we made some arrangement changes to give it a bit more of a traditional structure, and just did what we thought would best serve the song.”
“No Good” follows Anthony’s latest singles “Live in a Dream,” “Oh, What A World” (with The Darcys and Jocelyn Alice), and “Centerfold.”
“I’m hoping listeners will really connect with this one,” says Anthony. “It is so much easier than you’d think to get trapped in this cycle of a bad relationship. I’ve heard too often from people that when a relationship is going well they feel like it’s missing something and that something is the drama. It gives us this false sense of excitement, when really the constant drama, [analysis,] and need to always be looking for confrontation is not a healthy relationship at all. Hopefully this song helps bring clarity to even one person who is in a situation like this.”
“No Good” is out October 21 and will appear on Anthony’s forthcoming EP The Way You See Me. You can pre-save the track here.
