B-Side Guys

Navisha wrote “You” from the specific vantage point of a teenager in love, which she describes as being blind to anything else happening around you. The production takes that premise seriously. There’s no story in “You,” no arc of meeting and wanting and wondering. Just the groove, the heat, and the immediate present tense of someone whose peripheral vision has gone out entirely.

The Boorloo-based singer-songwriter, a WAAPA graduate at nineteen, builds the track on full-bodied electric guitars, keyboard textures, and a rhythmic foundation that keeps everything moving at the same unhurried pulse. Her voice sits at the center with the smoky confidence of someone who has figured out exactly how to carry this kind of material, flirtatious without being coy, sensual without announcing itself. The neo-soul and contemporary R&B influences are present in how the arrangement breathes, the spaces between phrases as deliberate as the phrases themselves.

The overdriven guitar that weaves through the track is the most interesting production choice. It adds grit against the velvet keyboard textures, a swagger that keeps the song from settling too comfortably into its own warmth. The groove stays laid-back but the guitar keeps pushing at the edges, which mirrors the restlessness of the feeling Navisha is describing. Infatuation at that pitch isn’t peaceful. It’s just relentless in a way that happens to feel good.

Her previous single “See Through” reached number twelve on local charts. “You” sounds like a natural step outward from that foundation, the funk influence giving her songwriting a new physical dimension to work in.