Music

It’s obviously been a major year for Cynthia Erivo. The star, who portrayed the iconic Elphaba in Jon M. Chu’s Wicked, is in the running for best actress in a leading role at this year’s Oscars ceremony and her inimitable vocal ability has been the inspiration behind many social media users attempting to recreate her otherworldly vocal run at the end of the film’s “Defying Gravity” number.

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But she’s not done just yet. Erivo chatted exclusively with Billboard about her brand new single, “Replay,” which arrived on Friday (Feb. 28) and marks her first solo release since 2021. “I’m sort of leaning into vulnerability these days,” she says with a laugh, and that sentiment is clear on the Justin Tranter co-written track, which delves into the emotional rollercoaster of being human. “I’m a constant work in progress, and I can’t keep fears at bay,” she opens the pop-leaning track with, before proclaiming in the chorus: “My mind is like a record, setup on auto-replay.”

“I’ve always wanted to be a music artist outside of being an actress, and my journey to it has just been different,” Erivo explains. “Some people come to it pretty early and some people come to it when the time is right, and this is the time for me.”

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With that in mind, the 38-year-old artist wants to introduce herself musically on her own terms, as the upbeat pop production of “Replay” leads listeners away from the ballads that they might be used to her belting for films in the past — to hopefully see Erivo as Cynthia, not as some of her famous onscreen roles. “I think people are really used to me singing a particular kind of way and particular kind of songs, but those songs are other people’s songs. Working on this music has been sort of a stream of consciousness that ended up being the page,” she says. “I think sometimes we’ll apply genre to a person, when the person hasn’t actually given you the genre that they are. I just happen to love to sing, but sometimes you don’t want to make big sounds, and you actually just want to tell a story, and that was what ‘Replay’ was about.”

She continues, “The song gives people the opportunity to get to know me a lot better, to get to know what goes on in my head from time to time, to get to know what I’ve thought in the past and sometimes even now, and the things that I have experienced. It’s almost like a personal lullaby that tells people who I am and that I’m human too, just like everybody else.”

Beyond its relatable and clever lyrical content, the production of “Replay” was just as personal to Erivo, inspired by the 90s Brit-pop she grew up with. “As a Brit, I wanted to bring something that felt particularly English, from my time, because I felt like we haven’t heard anything that feels like that in a while,” the London native explains.

“Everything that you hear in there — all the backing vocals, all of the pads, all of the whistling, even some of the percussion — that’s all me,” she adds enthusiastically. “I’m using my nails for what would sound like a clap. The whistle in the background is actually me whistling. The vocal padding and that vocal arrangement, that’s all me. If you listen carefully, you’ll feel the tempos speed up and then slow down again. It’s on purpose. It starts at 89 beats per minute, goes to 94 beats per minute and goes right back to 89 beats per minute, because it feels like what the heart rate does. It speeds up when things are getting a little bit strange, and then it comes back down.”

With her passion about “Replay” so evident, it’s no surprise Erivo is gearing up to release a full-length album, which she began working on in August 2023 and throughout her time filming Wicked. “I have to say that this is probably one of the most valuable experiences I’ve had in my life. I’ve written albums before, and it didn’t feel like this,” she says. “I knew the things I wanted to talk about and I knew the stories I wanted to tell. I knew the colors that I wanted in it — literally and figuratively, because some of the songs literally are based on a color. Like, what color do I want to write? Green! Then, one day I want to write about sex and, one day, I want to write about love or, today, I want to write about heartbreak, or maybe something in the color of blue.”

Overall, Erivo is ready for this next chapter in her career, keeping her heart on her sleeve as she always does and has become beloved for. “I want people to see that I’m a musician, like a person who understands the language of music implicitly and is willing to use it in loads of different ways,” she says. “It would be easy for me to sing a big ballad. Trust me, there’s a ballad on this album. But, more than anything, I love the making of music, the creating of music. I love using the music to tell the story. My story.”

Listen to Erivo’s “Replay” here.