Canadian pop singer RALPH premiered “Tommy” on Wednesday, a song from her forthcoming EP Gradience.
“Now I dream about Tommy / I can’t even focus ‘cause he’s got his hands on me,” sings the 30-year-old from Toronto. “Never had my number but I’m mad he never called me.”
RALPH says “Tommy” was written last July in producer Derek Hoffman’s studio.
“I’ve always always wanted to do a song where the chorus was a name (a la Dolly Parton ‘Jolene’ or Carly Rae Jepsen ‘Julian’),” she explained, in a release. “I told Derek that’s what I wanted to work on, so we drank a bunch of coffee and ran through a million names until the line ‘Tommy...do you want me’ popped up. We both instantly knew it was the one and everything built so easily from there.
“The idea of seeing someone in a crowd and feeling instantly drawn to them, then losing them suddenly, is such a relatable and devastating concept – It’s like a Cinderella story with a pop twist.”
The infectious track comes with a colourful video directed by Renée Rodenkirchen that showcases the work of stylists Carla Candela and Vanessa Popoli and wig stylists Justin Rousseau, Zach Baker and Kaila Baker.
Gradience will be RALPH’s first collection of new music since her 2019 EP Flashbacks & Fantasies and follows her early-2020 single “Superbloom” and a cover last summer of the 1998 Jennifer Paige banger “Crush.”
Familiar to fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race Canada, RALPH earned a Dance Recording of the Year JUNO nomination last year for “Gravity.”
Check out the video for “Tommy” below: