Marlon Williams Returns with New Single/Video, ‘My Boy’

4 May 2022

Marlon Williams returns with My Boy, his first new solo music since 2018’s Make Way For Love, and the announcement of a full band North American and European tour!

On the breezy My Boy, Williams’ “rare and entrancing” (NPR Music) vocals are on full display atop a loping sway of a feathered Māori strum. He’s backed by a new cast of musicians: co-producer Tom Healy on electric guitars, LA-based drummer Paul Taylor (Feist, Crowded House), bassist Cass Basil (Ladyhawke, The Veils, Tiny Ruins), Mark Perkins (Merk) on vocals and additional production, and Elroy Finn (Crowded House, Elroy Finn) on additional percussion.

Williams elaborates: “My Boy is a pop song with a Māori folk strum. The urge to turn every song on the planet into a Māori strummer descended on me like a fever sometime during the long and winding tour cycle of Make Way for Love. So, writing it into my artistic life became the only way to get the fever to lift.

“I turned up at Mark ‘Merk’ Perkins studio early in 2019 with My Boy and a small handful of other tunes. Some simple songs will try to tempt and lure you into over-complication; this one showed no such insecurities. For the first time in my writing life, it didn’t even demand lyrics in the chorus. It laid itself out, buoyed by its own sailing rhythm and lightness of phrase: Mark and I fleshed out the demo with a simple drumbeat and a whimsical mellotron descant and dinner was largely on the table. Going into Roundhead with Tom and the band, we kept that simplicity, adding only some extra percussion from Elroy Finn and a folk electric guitar solo from Tom.”

Shot in the height of the Aotearoa summer in Williams’ front yard and the Lyttelton Trinity Hall, the accompanying video was directed by Martin Sagadin and Williams and features choreography courtesy of Robyn Jordaan.

Watch Marlon Williams’ Video for My Boy

Marlon last appeared on the stage in Aotearoa when he completed 28 sold out shows across the country on his tour An Evening With Marlon Williams. Audience members at the shows may remember My Boy, the first song of the second half, where Marlon re-enters the stage with this fun and flirty dance number (mimicked in the music video).

Following the release of his second album, Make Way For Love, which won Album of the Year at the VNZMAs (now Aotearoa Music Awards)and debuted at #1 on the New Zealand RIANZ (now Recorded Music) Top 40 charts and #8 on the ARIA Australian charts, Williams became an in-demand collaborator. He sang on stage with Lorde and Florence Welch, recorded duets with Courtney Barnett, Paul Kelly, Yo-Yo Ma, an album with Kacy and Clayton, as well as composed his first film score for 2021’s Juniper. He also shifted much attention towards acting, landing major roles in films The True History of the Kelly Gang, Lone Wolf, The Beautiful Lie and current Netflix series Sweet Tooth, and making a cameo in the film, A Star Is Born.