Brooklyn based soulful pop artist Mima Good has just released “Granddaddy”, the third single off her upcoming album. The singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist has been working on an exploratory, genre-bending collection of songs for the past year in her home studio. From a closet vocal booth covered in red velvet, Mima playfully serenades her microphone with youthful woes from a troubled world.
Granddaddy is a dreamlike, jazz-inspired dip into Mima Good’s imagination. Bass, drums, and a chorus of vintage voices rock the listener into a luminescent trance. The production builds into a satisfying groove as New York legend Christopher McBride takes a saxophone solo. This song is very personal to Mima- “My grandfather died in a freak accident when my mother was 11. Nevertheless, I feel very close to him and sometimes feel like he is watching over me. I wrote this song when my grandmother, the closest person to me in this world, passed 2 years ago. I was thinking about her returning to him after all these years apart, and all the ways we are connected that we cannot see, the mystery of family you’ve never met but carry in your blood.”
Listen: “Granddaddy”
When Mima Good, whose stage name is an amalgam of murdered witches from the Salem era, burst onto the scene with 2018’s Good Girl EP, it was no wonder the likes of FADER Magazine took notice. In those five songs, Rosen articulated the healing process from a tumultuous relationship with a former bandmate-- A journey from attachment, to abuse, and finally self-liberation. But more generally, Rosen was processing a confusing relationship with her own femininity in a culture that tells girls to be “good,” even when the men around them behave badly.
Mima Good’s sound and aesthetic espouses a pop sensibility combined with a dark atmosphere of synths, organs & guitars, creating moody, catchy, soul-songs with a wide breadth of contemporary and classic influences-- from pioneering female artists from Billie Ellish and Lana Del Rey, to Nina Simone or Billie Holiday. Mima Good's songs tackle topics of healing and mental health, empowerment and feminism. Her upcoming album, “Hydra”, elevates her jazzy pop to a faster tempo, striving to give anxiety and depression something to dance to. When asked to describe her new sound, Rosen writes: "That mood when you wanna dance alone in your room and shed a tear or two, that mood when you wanna hug and slay your inner demons, that mood when you're planning your next tattoo... it’s gotta hurt but it’s gotta be fun, baby!"
