Story: Luci Turner
Photos: Liz Rosa
The year is vague, but the decade is anything but: the 70s. Disco is king — or, in this case, very definitely queen. Luxury and excess is the name of the game. The fashion and the people — not to mention the vices and antics — are legend. And the music? It didn’t just shape a generation; it started a revolution.
“I remember seeing this book about Studio 54,” says Goldilox. “When I opened the book, I saw all these pictures of people having fun, dancing, laughing, drinking with champagne, hanging with people I wish I could have met. Bianca Jagger riding into the club on a white horse…I wanted to capture that energy.”
Canadian by birth but Parisian to the core, model and artist Goldilox was enraptured by the neon lights, smoky clubs, and champagne-sweet sheen of the 70s, but what she found beneath the glamour was even more transfixing. “This moment in time and music really spoke to me. People were claiming back their freedom through music and dance. Women had never been so strong and idolized [than] during that period in music. And on top of it all, the revolution was all about fun.”
Having experienced her own reclamation of freedom — after releasing her debut EP, Skin, with Sony in 2016, Goldilox broke away from the label to pursue a career as an independent artist — Very Best became a seven-song declaration of liberation, femininity, and power, dancing above a groove that sends listeners searching for their favorite pair of velvet flairs and platform pumps. “The music was rich!” she says. “Keyboard, bass, guitars, string, you name it. Producers went all in and tried everything that was available to them. Visuals were extravagant and sexy. There was this sense of opulence that I really enjoy.”
With the release of her first single, “I Love You,” Goldilox effortlessly captures the time-stopping, earth-shaking moment when those three words are spoken for the first time, set to a haunting melody and driven by tantalizingly danceable bass and drums. Very Best opens with Ouverture, transporting listeners to what might have been Studio 54, circa 1977, and the trip goes on, long and strange and intoxicating, darkening briefly on “Sex Paranoïa.” Like so many memories of the 70s, the scene shifts and blurs in “Complimentary Drinks,” before shattering and falling sharply into focus, heartbeat syncing with the kick drum and sweat dripping during the sticky-sweet “Candy Girl.”
“This album is really my take on disco,” Goldilox shares. “Watching Diana Ross take her shoes off on stage and dance around to “Maniac”…it wasn’t perfectly organized or serious. It was loose and genuine, and that’s the type of energy I want people to feel when they listen to Very Best.”
Mission accomplished. Launching into the ultimate dance beat with “Very Best,” angelic vocals float above funky keys, wrapped in a sheer, sequined jumpsuit that Cher would approve of. There’s a hint of regret in the lyrics — “I gave you all the love I had / Sometimes I wish I could take it back” — but this isn’t another lovesick girl writing songs in a journal in her bedroom. Goldilox is riding into the club on the back of a white horse like Bianca Jagger, kicking off her shoes like Diana Ross, and daring anyone to stop her.
“To The Moon” wraps up the disco-flavored offering, heavy on the synth, dreamy and ethereal while never losing the energy that Goldilox first saw captured in photographs. It compels listeners to move wildly and freely, and transports them to a time most of us can only fantasize about.
Very Best encapsulates all the contradicting facets of a decade left to the devotees still spinning those worn out records: the grit and glamour, the neon lights and the dark little clubs where legendary figures moved in the shadows to the beat of a new sound. Can’t get enough? Neither can we.
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