The XX’s Romy Madley Croft launches her solo career with new dance anthem Lifetime. After announcing her new direction earlier this year, via an Instagram live stream, she shared her first single yesterday (September 29), and promises that there’s an album on the way. ‘Lifetime’ is far more like The XX’s newer, less self-conscious work, than their early, solemn releases – Romy’s solo career feels like it might provide a missing link in understanding this trajectory. You can listen to her ode to crowded dancefloors, and watch its neon lyric video, below.
Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait a little longer to truly appreciate Romy’s banger, because it’s practically begging to be played in a club. This total burst of energy is certainly reminiscent of some of the major 90s dance-floor fillers – and also, I would point out, an eighties synth vibe of the Tears For Fears variety. To me it also has just a twinkle of ‘Life In A Northern Town’ about it. What I’m saying is, if ‘Lifetime’ had come on at the eighties night at university, it would hardly have been out of place.
Romy wants us to understand that dance hits are important to her, from the eighties to the Ibiza scene; she wrote on social media, “I’ve always loved club classics that unite a room, big emotional dance songs, that you can sing along to as well. I’m excited to have the opportunity to show my love for dance music with ‘Lifetime’.
She added with a bittersweet note, “I loved working with a very talented and inspiring group of people on this song, thank you so much Fred again, Marta Salogni, Joy Anonymous and Jamie xx. I had dreamt that we could be dancing in a room together to this song by now, but until then I hope you can dance to it wherever you are!”
Afterwards I’ll be premiering the lyric video on YouTube at 6:45pm BSThttps://t.co/bdGeQDzGpu
— Romy (@romyromyromy) September 28, 2020
Beneath its catchy, neon, dance surface, ‘Lifetime’ is wrestling with greater concepts of time and making the most of everything. “Once in a lifetime / something matters,” Romy declares as the music falls away and we are suspended in the moment, thinking about how special everything is. She has spoken about the song wanting “to appreciate the moment before its gone”.
We’re all familiar with this urge these days, and Romy is clear that the moment could be anything, from a huge night out to a quiet moment with your loved ones – “simple moments of togetherness, meant the most to me,” she began to realise during the pandemic. But it also feels like the perfect sentiment for those few minutes on the dance floor where you’re having the time of your life and its all lights and colours and you don’t know what the time is or how long you’ve been there. Inevitably, clubbing can’t sustain that perfect haze for very long, but the stars might just align for three minutes when you hear ‘Lifetime’ on the dancefloor for the first time.
