Good news for people who like good tunes. Amanda Sudano-Ramirez and Abner Ramirez, better known as JOHNNYSWIM, are finally returning with a brand new album — their first since 2019’s Moonlight. The self-titled project is releasing in April, and we’ve got our first single today. It’s called “Heaven Is Everywhere” and it’s terrific.
In a press release, Abner said the song came to him from that creative font from which most good ideas flow: the shower.
“When I started singing this chorus in the shower, I felt like what was inside of me was bigger than the whole world and I wanted to share it,” he said. “I find, whether it’s in church or in politics, that people get so obsessed with right and wrong and their certainty of it. If we experience the beauty of this life, even though the drudgery and the misery, there’s glimpses of heaven around us at all times. My hope with this song is that people can feel that when they hear it and sing it.”
In the press release, Amanda talked about the challenge of creating an album on lockdown. “This has been the most isolated we’ve been in a creative process,” she said. “But part of that has been really nice because instead of going off what we feel other people are responding to we’re really just trusting our own instincts and saying what we feel we need to say in the way we need to say it. In a lot of ways, I feel like it’s the most ‘us’ a record has been in a long time.”
This comes on the heels of season two of The Johnnyswim Show, the docuseries about their lives on the Magnolia Network. In March, they’ll kick off a nationwide tour in Memphis, Tennessee that will culminate near their home in Los Angeles. Check out all the dates and ticket information here.
