Kevin Bronson on February 3rd, 2020

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Plenty of pop songs can boast of being inspiring, but the new single from Marlana sounds like an inspirational. No, religion is not involved, but insistent beats, woozy breakdowns and stack of gospel-like vocals are.

Those qualities add up to a hypnotic cadence in “The Right,” due for a Tuesday release. It’s the second solo outing from Marlana, aka Marlana Sheetz, who is a founding member of the L.A indie-pop group Milo Greene.

“One day I came across a YouTube clip of an artist I admire being questioned about his unconventional career choices over the years — to which he simply responded by saying how fortunate he feels having the right to be whatever he wants to be,” Marlana says. “As an artist, I always find myself questioning what I’m doing — so when I saw this, my instant reaction was ‘He’s such a G. He doesn’t give a fuck. I want to be like that.’

“It’s the moment that inspired my journey to start releasing music I’m genuinely proud of without fear of failure. If nothing happens with these songs, or they never get written about or blog love, that’s OK. I’ll survive. It’s more important to be authentically myself in my music for the first time.”

Surprisingly, the song, which could be heard recently on Netflix’s “Santa Clarita Diet,” is a bedroom recording. Evidence, we suppose, that you can be not be only whatever you want to be, but you can do it wherever you want to do it.

||| Stream: “The Right”

||| Previously: “So Bad”