While her worldwide legion of fans still await the premiere of the music video for her debut single, the NFL-adopted "In My City," Bollywood superstar Priyanka Chopra has quietly released a follow-up, officially credited to New York-based producers/DJ duo The Chainsmokers. As that credit would suggest, "Erase" is, like her first release, a dance single, but the similarities pretty much begin and end there, for if "In My City" fell squarely in the more pop/mainstream end of the spectrum, "Erase" occupies a darker, harder-edged underground club vibe--and the more aggressive and adventurous production also bleeds into Chopra's vocal performance. As she effortlessly glides between a slinky, sensual purr on the verses to an urgent, climactic wail as The Chainsmokers' beats pulsate and percolate to an epic electronica explosion, Chopra displays a vocal abandon akin to the all-in fearlessness she routinely displays in her acting roles--a sense of liberation and exhilaration that is nowhere in evidence in her fun but rather safe debut single. While "In My City" did make me initially interested in what Chopra does as a recording artist, "Erase" makes me more invested in the greater potential of how she develops musically as she experiments and fuses with sounds that lie more on the fringes. (Now, more than ever, I am clamoring for a collaboration, both in film and in music, between Chopra and Driis/7Wallace...)
Buy The Chainsmokers and Priyanka Chopra's "Erase" single here.
Buy Priyanka Chopra and will.i.am's "In My City" single here.
