News: Nina Nesbitt confirms UK tour for November
4 min read
Nina Nesbitt is set to take her continuing rising star status to the next level with the news that she will release her eagerly anticipated new album ‘Älskar’ on September 2nd. Nina today launches the album alongside the new single ‘Pressure Makes Diamonds’ as well as its official video.
Made in the show of the introspection, loss and fear of lockdown, ‘Älskar’ celebrates life in all of its complexities as well as love in every form imaginable. As we’ve heard from its previous singles ‘Dinner Table’ and ‘When You Lose Someone’, ‘Älskar’ (meaning “to love” in Swedish, a reflection of Nina’s half-Swedish heritage) shimmers with both tender, intimate ballads and huge escapist ‘80s-tinged bangers that beg for the dancefloor.
Nina says, “Making this album was a completely different experience to anything I’ve made before, although a lot of the music was created remotely, I feel that I’ve processed so much and learnt a lot about the relationships in my life during the last few years. I wanted to capture all types of love in their raw forms, whether it be romantic, heartbreak, friendship, coming of age, familial or self love.”
The new single ‘Pressure Makes Diamonds’ is one of the album’s brightest moments, all refined alt-pop sparkle and alluring effervescent melodies which are capped by Nina’s quick-flowing freestyle vocal. It’s a song of contrasts. Its sound is immediately catchy and fun, but it expresses a powerful message: the stereotypical expectations that so many young women are expected to conform to as they reach their mid-twenties. Nina wrote the song with its producers Jack & Coke (Charli XCX, Tove Lo) and the Swedish artist SHY Martin. It was then mixed by the award-winning Manon Grandjean (Stormzy, Dave).
Nina adds, “I wrote ‘Pressure Makes Diamonds’ about trying to navigate my way through the societal pressures I started to feel as a woman in my mid-twenties.”
The ‘Pressure Makes Diamonds’ video uses a lighter tone to deliver Nina’s point. Nina plays a host of stereotypical female characters which are all common in fiction, but which are closer to one-dimensional clichés than they are to real people. By playing such a range of characters, Nina shows that everyone is infinitely more nuanced than such limited tropes suggest. The video is her latest collaboration with director Wolf James, and was created with the help of a predominantly female crew.
In addition to the singles, ‘Älskar’ introduces highlights at every turn. The early landmark moment ‘Teenage Chemistry’ celebrates Nina’s current long-term relationship with beat-driven dreamy elegance and the instantly relatable lyrics. It then journeys through the minimalist ambient pop of ‘No Time (For My Life To Suck’), an intimate, acoustic arrangement on ‘I Should Be A Bird’, and cinematic balladeering with ‘Colours of You’. By the time the album closes with the gorgeously glacial title track, it’s evident that Nina Nesbitt has created an album that primes her for a much bigger future.
The album emerged in stages. It started in the summer of 2019 when Nina started writing in Sweden during a visit to see her grandmother. Plans for a second trip to Sweden in 2020 were halted by the pandemic, forcing Nina to focus on Zoom sessions from a spare room in her mum’s house. It was a tricky but liberating experience that gave Nina the freedom to truly expose her emotions through the cathartic release of music. She wrote or co-wrote every song that features on the album, and produced or co-produced many of its tracks.
‘Älskar’ is now available to pre-save or pre-order. Fans who pre-order the album will receive instant downloads of ‘Pressure Makes Diamonds’, ‘DInner Table’ and ‘When You Lose Someone’.
2022 has already seen Nina almost immediately sell-out two low-key shows in Glasgow and London as well as tour the States as guest to James Arthur. She can now confirm details of her first UK tour in three years. Fans who pre-order ‘Älskar’ will receive access to a pre-sale for tour tickets, which opens at 9am UK time on Thursday, June 9th. Tickets will then go on general sale from 9am UK time on Friday, June 17th.
Nina is also now confirmed to play two huge stadium shows as guest to Coldplay at Glasgow’s Hampden Park on August 23rd and 24th. The Coldplay shows follow her previously announced festival sets at the Isle of Wight and Glasgow’s TRNSMT.
Upcoming UK tour dates:
JUNE
19th – Isle of Wight Festival
JULY
10th – TRNSMT Festival
AUGUST
23rd – Glasgow, Hampden Park (guest to Coldplay)
24th – Glasgow, Hampden Park (guest to Coldplay)
NOVEMBER – HEADLINE TOUR
13th – Leeds, Stylus
14th – Brighton, CHALK
15th – London, Electric Brixton
17th – Bristol, Trinity Centre
18th – Birmingham, O2 Institute 2
20th – Manchester, Ritz
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