14 FEBRUARY 2020 (TORONTO, ON) -- Two-time GRAMMY Award winning singer and songwriter Gregory Porter has shared “If Love Is Overrated”, a heart-warming new single from his forthcoming sixth studio album ALL RISE, which will be released April 17th on Blue Note Records/Universal Music Canada, the country's leading music company. The track follows the album’s soaring lead single “Revival”. ALL RISE is available for pre-order in deluxe and standard vinyl, CD, and digital versions.
Pre-order ALL RISE HERE
Watch the official video for "If Love Is Overrated" HERE
Listen to "If Love Is Overrated" HERE
“‘If Love Is Overrated’ is a love song to love, in a pessimistic environment,” says Porter. “It is the energy that excites the heart and the head without this love being announced to the world… a secret admiration even.”
The touching song is a classic Gregory Porter ballad, a gorgeous torch song full of romance with a heartfelt lyric that finds the singer abandoning logic for a mere chance at seeing love's promise bloom. Porter’s magnificent voice is accompanied by his trusted band featuring pianist Chip Crawford, bassist Jahmal Nichols, drummer Emanuel Harrold, and saxophonist Tivon Pennicott, plus a graceful string arrangement by Troy Miller performed by the London Symphony Orchestra Strings.
Following 2017's Nat King Cole & Me, a loving dedication to his lifelong idol, ALL RISE marks a return to Porter's beloved original songwriting — heart-on-sleeve lyrics imbued with everyday philosophy and real-life detail, set to a stirring mix of jazz, soul, blues, gospel, and pop. The album, which was produced by Troy Miller, also represents the evolution of Porter's art to something even more emphatic, emotive, intimate, and universal too.
“Yes, you could say that I went big,” says Porter about his latest, which combines the talents of his longtime loyal bandmates, a handpicked horn section, a 10-member choir, and the London Symphony Orchestra Strings. “But, quite frankly, the way I write in my head, it all happens with just voice and piano first, and it's built up from there. It feels good to get back to the rhythms and the styles and the feelings and the way that I like to lay down my own music from start to finish.”
As Porter worked out this album's direction, he looked inward, upward, and around him, and arrived at a raison d'être found in the title, ALL RISE. “We hear that phrase when presidents or judges come into the room,” says Porter, “but I'm thinking all of us rise — not just one person being exalted. We are all exalted and lifted up by love. This is my political thought and my real truth. It comes from my personality, my mother's personality, the personality of the blues, and of black people. It's this idea of making do with the scraps, of resurrection and ascension, and of whatever the current situation is, it can get better through love.”
GREGORY PORTER – 2020 CANADIAN TOUR DATES:
July 2 – Toronto Jazz Festival – Toronto, ON
July 4 – Montreal International Jazz Festival – Montreal, QC
Full tour itinerary available online HERE.
Follow Gregory Porter:
WEBSITE • FACEBOOK • TWITTER • INSTAGRAM
If love is overrated
Let me be the one that is naive
If love is overrated
Let me be the one that is deceived
Let me find that your hands that are touching me
Is not the hand that's supposed to be
Your lips, an illusion
Let me be the only fool for your embrace
Let me fall upon my face
I like this strange illusion
If love is overrated
Why is it the only thing I serve?
If love is overrated
Why is the one I'm in the one that I deserve?
I
can tell you, oh, it feels so real
Every touch that I steal
Your arms, an illusion
Let me be the only fool for your embrace
Let me fall upon my face
I like this strange illusion
Whoa, I'm okay
With love's never ending dream
It's a risk I like to take
In the hope I never wake
From this thing I call my fake reality
If love is overrated
Let me be the one that is naive
If love is overrated
Let me be the one that is deceived
Let me find that your
hands that are touching me
Is not the hand that's supposed to be
Your lips, an illusion
Let me be the only fool that you embrace
Let me fall upon my face
I like this strange illusion
Whoa, I'm okay
Love's never ending dream
That's a risk I like to take
In the hope I'll never wake
From this thing I call my fake reality
If love is overrated
I like overrated
If love is overrated
I love overrated
If love is overrated
I am obsessed with
overrated
If love is overrated
I'm in love with overrated
Overrated