Zāna drops new Single

Zāna’s new single “Nah” comes along with a new music video filled with the same stylishness and attention to narrative detail defining her previous release “Call Ya”. It depicts the struggles many beautiful young women face when they go out for an evening of fun at a nightclub – the leering stares, rude remarks, wandering hands, and general disrespect from men who often view them as nothing but pieces of meat. The video has a pronounced sense of humor rather than belaboring its point – Zāna deals with her harassers by “zapping” them with her finger and the actors involved with the production provide a few laughs with their lightly exaggerated reactions. Their “approaches” are writ on the screen in stylized white letters and the atmospheric filming complements the evocative musical approach. She has recruited a strong supporting cast to make the video even more entertaining for viewers and they reinforce the aforementioned comedic elements while never attempting to overshadow the performer at the center of it all.

URL: https://www.zanazora.com/music

The chorus for the song is one of its best parts. She does, perhaps, rely a little too much on revisiting this portion of the song, but it is clear what her thinking is – the track has an undeniable hook that never loses its effectiveness. The verses unroll with smooth stylishness in her hands and you cannot help but be impressed by her phrasing – instead of sounding like a young performer, she often comes off as someone who has been perfecting and honing her art for many years and sounds at or near the peak of her powers. Her skill as a songwriter is most obvious in the track’s transitions – the movement between individual verses and into the chorus has an easy seamlessness that you cannot ignore and enhances the overall presentation.

Her lyrics are exceptional. It isn’t often you can say that about anything in the modern pop realm, regardless of genre variation, but that’s the case here. Zāna dives deep into the experience of dealing with male objectification with steely confidence – she is writing from an autobiographical place and has dealt with this sort of behavior countless times, but doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Instead, she dismisses these sort of morons with a blasé wave of the hand and it is delivered in a series of often alliterative and even eloquent lines. There’s no rage here. She knows what she is dealing with and knows how to push such people away with brevity and more than a dollop of grace.

SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/album/1J1ZVH2JzGXXvBjvbRIiRu

The musical identity of the song is another strength. While she isn’t remaking the musical wheel with the arrangement for “Nah”, she does succeed in achieving an unique stylistic synthesis between the Latin and Arabic elements of her musical character. Nothing is overwrought. Instead, the song unfolds with uncanny naturalness – it is as if this song had already been written somehow and was waiting for Zāna to give it life. She has done so. “Nah” may be grounded in the real world but she has filled it with a special magic few performers can claim as their own.

Michael Rand