The LA-based pop hope Debbii Dawson makes gloriously explosive '80s-style aerobic jams that would've been right at home on the Flashdance soundtrack. She's really good at it. After going viral with an ABBA cover on America's Got Talent in 2022, she released a couple of EPs, Learning in 2023 and How To Be Human in 2024. Last year, she dropped impressive singles like "Gut Feelings" and "I Want You." Now, she's got another EP on the way, and her lead single is a banger.
Dawson's new EP Where Have All The Good Men Gone? comes out next month, and even though the title track describes a sad state of affairs, the song itself couldn't be more joyous. Dawson co-wrote and recorded it with Lorde collaborator Joel Little, and it makes gorgeous use of her uniquely crystalline voice. The track has some of the same pulsing efficiency of Chappell Roan's uptempo jams. In the video, Dawson battles a nefarious supervillain and then plays a triumphant keytar solo. Here's what Dawson says about it:
Every day, I watch the news and think, "Wow, this is terrible." And every day seems worse than the day before. I find myself wondering if there are any good people left on this planet, why am I seeing supervillains everywhere I turn? I was binging Smallville at the time, wishing that Superman would swoop in and save the day. That’s the headspace I was in when I met up with Joel Little at his home in Los Angeles. I found a spiderweb in my car, but no spider, so I took an Uber to his house just to be safe. We wrote the song pretty quick because he had a flight to Middle Earth, also known as New Zealand, to catch. We bounced some production ideas back and forth over text but really dove in the next time we were together in person. A fun fact is that a large portion of the production for this song was done on the Korg RK-100S2 keytar, it’s so versatile and has been a staple in many of my recent projects. At the time, I had also just seen Toto and Men At Work in concert, and it left me walking on air. What an immensely talented group of people; they were definitely additional inspirations. I wanted to write about our grim reality in a non-emo way. I hope this song shakes listeners up a bit and causes action. Good people are hard to come by these days, but if we each try to be the good we’re so desperately looking for, we just might have a chance.
Check it out below.
The Where Have All The Good Men Gone? EP is out 6/26 on RCA.
