Silk City is back, baby.
Made up of Diplo and Mark Ronson, the power duo returns Thursday (Jan. 21) with “New Love,” featuring scene queen Ellie Goulding. The song is a shimmery house anthem made up of legitimately joyful strings and synths over which Goulding’s ever-slinky voice proclaims lyrics about the power of self-acceptance.
“Didn’t always like myself, didn’t always get it right, thought I was someone else, and that’s the girl you liked,” Goulding divulges before launching into a chorus that banishes that pesky inner critic to the past when she proclaims that now, “I got new love in me.”
“The song is about losing yourself on your own, not needing to be seen, knowing that the one that got away could be just as happy as this too,” Goulding says in a statement. “The main concept is dancing on your own not needing to be seen.”
In that vein, in the video Diplo and Ronson appear only as faces on the “missing” section of a milk carton and then again inside a television broadcast with breaking news about the song. Meanwhile Goulding plays both the club’s kinda sleazy bouncer and its truly fabulous resident diva. Watch the clip below.
Populating the rest of the club (in a sort of social-distanced way) is a pack of avant garde club kids and one breastfeeding mother who altogether emphasize the song’s message of loving yourself with full abandon. The clip was directed by Ana Sting, who’s done work for artists including Rosalia, Dua Lipa and Idris Elba.
“New Love” is the first Silk City track since 2018, when the duo released a trinity of songs that included the Grammy-winning Dua Lipa collab “Electricity.”
“I’m always stoked to get back in the studio with Mark,” Diplo says in a statement. “We’ve been constantly trading ideas since the start of Silk City and finally found the time to bring some of them to life. We came out with this classic house record and Ellie was kind enough to lend her voice to it.”
“I love the music that comes out when Wes and I get together,” adds Ronson. “It has a joy to it that’s different from everything else I work on. I’ve known Ellie for over ten years, and it’s great to finally get to make something together. Her voice has such a pure tone that cuts through everything.”
“It seemed only right to make a tune together at a time where we all need to dance and be free,” continues Goulding, “even if just in our kitchens.”
