Rising singer-songwriter Erica Manzoli has today released her stunning debut EP, I’m Okay, I Promise, via The Orchard / Sony Music. The four-track EP features Erica’s new single ‘Rock Bottom’ accompanied by an impressive, beautiful stop-motion lyric video with each and every frame embroidered by artist Meg Mckenzie released at 4:30PM BST today. The EP comes ahead of Erica’s headline live show at The Waiting Room in London next week on May 5.
LISTEN TO I’M OKAY, I PROMISE EP HERE
I’m Okay, I Promise was written solely by Erica in her bedroom during lockdown – a time she spent immersing herself in her own thoughts and weaving those thoughts into music. Across the EP, Erica diarises intimate ruminations of her own inner-workings through her remarkable knack for relatable, emotive and gripping lyricism, weaved through infectious hooks and enthralling melodies.
Discussing the EP, Erica says “Writing this EP was a personal dive into the inner workings of my brain during a dark spot. I realised people tend to struggle inwardly and pretending you’re okay when you’re not is so normalised. I took a lot of time to work on my brain and am grateful I’m in a much better place now, but I wasn’t at the time and it felt important not to shy away from that.”
New single ‘Rock Bottom’ is a beautiful track that describes the comfort of rock bottom and the fear of picking yourself back up again just to get let down as she delicately sings, ‘I’m a little too in love with rock bottom / No one ever lets me down at rock bottom’.
On the single, Erica says “I think when you’re having a hard time, allowing yourself to be vulnerable can be exhausting and it’s tempting not to try at all. Sometimes when I’m completely happy I get anxious that I’m not anxious and wait for something to go wrong. So there’s some comfort in knowing things can’t get worse.” She continues, “In the second verse I sing ‘I can’t even take a shower, what’s the point when I’m going back to bed’, which I wrote on feeling hopeless and to show the cyclical kind of mindset you can fall into. I feel like basic human self-care is easy to ignore when you’re suffering mentally and that’s the lesser-seen side of depression that people don’t often talk about.”
I’m Okay, I Promise opens with Erica’s debut single ‘My Best Friend Is My Therapist’, narrating feelings of disconnect during the pandemic where digital conversations with her therapist were her only regular communication. The single garnered support from Notion, Wonderland, BBC Introducing and more. A very visually-inspired artist, Erica’s visuals are works of minimalist beauty. The accompanying video saw contrasting real and digital versions of herself to depict the detached nature of the digital world, projected onto semi-translucent fabric to reflect the fragility and often see-through nature of an online persona vs real life.
The second track, also Erica’s second single, is ‘Silent Movie’ described as “absolutely beautiful” by Jo Whiley on BBC Radio 2 and praised by Abbie McCarthy on BBC Introducing as she named it her Track Of The Week. Lyrically, the single tackles her deeply personal experience of growing up with feelings of dissociation that she recounts often felt like living in a silent movie. The song is perfectly depicted in the single’s black and white video that continued Erica’s use of projectors from her debut.
The EP journeys into ‘I Would Break Up With Me If I Could’ – a song written after a breakup when Erica decided to stop giving the person who broke her heart a weight and place in her life that they didn’t deserve by writing songs about them, and instead wrote about the most important, albeit most toxic, relationship of all – the one with herself. The line and subsequent title ‘I Would Break Up With Me If I Could’ Erica summarises by saying “If anyone talked to me or treated me the way that I did to myself, I would have cut them out of my life by now.”
Fans will be able to hear the EP live for the first time at Erica’s debut headline show at The Waiting Room in London on May 5. Tickets to Erica’s London show are on sale HERE.
