Zonke releases her highly anticipated album L.O.V.E. in stores and across all streaming and download platforms worldwide. With her fifth studio album L.O.V.E., Zonke gives a masterclass in the artistry of remaining unwaveringly true to a signature sound, while dialing it up, with searing confidence, to the heart of the current music moment.
This is evident on Tonight, the first single off Zonke’s first full-length album in three years. An irresistible slice of late-night sensuality, filtered over bass-heavy grooves and spliced with subtly suggestive piano parts, Tonight is a siren call for those who know that the only moment that counts is the present one. Already a chart-topper, it’s one of the most assured tracks to have emerged from Zonke’s formidable songwriting pen.
Over the past fifteen years, Zonke’s abundant musical gifts have ensured she is one of the most important artists working on the continent today. In this, Zonke is undeniably a modern-day African renaissance woman – as effortlessly capable of writing songs of immense emotional impact as she is of leading a group of musicians to execute the precise sound she requires for each of her compositions.
When it came to recording L.O.V.E., Zonke didn’t shy away from creating music that signals the year it was made in. “As much as you might be a musician who has a signature sound, you need to be able to carry that through the different times you find yourself working in,” she explains. That said, Zonke is, if anything, even more self-directed in her music-making than she’s ever been in her considerable career. “I don’t worry about relevance or sit and think about how I am going to make my music sound ‘now’. I am only true to my artistic journey which has always been about not following where others have gone, but about starting something new.”
L.O.V.E. stands for Living Out Various Emotions and the songs of the album are about what Zonke calls “the craziness and different emotions of love”. “I just went with my heart on this album and my heart wanted me to write about love”.
