“Queens and Pharaohs” names two very specific kinds of royalty, rulers tied to one place and one history: ancient Egypt. ZouZou Mansour’s father is Egyptian, and the song’s climactic solo actually quotes a Middle Eastern melody in his honor, tying the title directly to her own family history.
That same instinct for specificity runs through the lyrics too. “I think I’m wrapped too tight / we’re breaking through the rafters,” Mansour sings in the second verse, a tension followed immediately by its own release. That couplet lines up with a documented turning point in her life: canceling a tour for the first time in her career, cutting ties with collaborators who weren’t serving her, and rebuilding both her personal and professional life around what she’s called a rebirth.
The verse keeps building from there: drifting in tides, lifting in waves, sinking in someone’s eyes, landing on what she calls a brave kind of love. Soraia has described this song specifically as Mansour stepping into the healthy love she believes she deserves, after a stretch of choosing people and situations that weren’t good for her.
This batch of songs marks a real shift in how Soraia works: written and recorded before ever being played live, a first for a band that’s put out ten albums since 2008. Mansour co-produced the sessions with Jon-Mikal Bartee of The Idiot Kids inside a barn the band had previously used for rehearsals, with bassist Travis Smith and drummer Brianna Sig holding down the rhythm section alongside guest guitar and keys. “Queens and Pharaohs” carries all of that newness while still sounding like a band eighteen years into figuring out exactly what it’s capable of.
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