Hear Candi Staton’s Funky New Song ‘Confidence’

Southern soul pioneer Candi Staton will be releasing her 30th album, Unstoppable, on August 24th. The album, which follows the 2016 gospel-dance collection It’s Time to Be Free, returns Staton to her roots with a mix of original material and covers steeped in her trademark blend of funk, disco, dance-based r&b and classic southern soul.

To coincide with the album announcement, Staton also released the album lead single, “Confidence,” a funky r&b strut that finds Staton preaching resilience and self-determination.

Unstoppable marks the 78-year-old singer’s first release since the death of Rick Hall, the legendary Muscle Shoals producer who produced Staton’s indelible run of country-soul singles at FAME studios in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Recorded with longtime producer Mark Nevers, the album will feature a mix of upbeat dance-based tracks and socially aware statements of uplift, plus Staton’s takes on Patti Smith’s “People Have the Power” and Nick Lowe’s “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding.”

Staton most recently reunited with Hall for 2014’s Life Happens. That album’s lead single, “I Ain’t Easy to Love,” which featured Jason Isbell and John Paul White, was named one of Rolling Stone Country’s greatest songs of the year in 2014.

Unstoppable marks the latest milestone for Staton, who first began performing more than 60 years ago as a teenage member of the Jewel Gospel trio in the mid-Fifties.

“I’m in awe every day,” Staton says in a release. “There are so many of my peers that are not here to see something like this happen to them.”

To celebrate the album’s release, Staton, who remains more popular in Europe than she is in America, will be embarking on her first U.S. tour in many years, including a showcase performance at this year’s AmericanaFest in September.

Unstoppable will be released on August 24th via Beracah/Thirty Tigers.