Hear Tinashe Channel Eighties on Upbeat New Song ‘Flame’

Tinashe includes pounding drums and fluffy synthesizers on “Flame,” her first new release since the Nightride album arrived last November.

“Flame” is a departure from the dance-heavy singles Tinashe released in the last year (“Superlove,” “Company”). This new direction is more similar to Taylor Swift’s “Style.” The track moves at a comfortable medium tempo, swelling behind battering synthesizers and steady percussion. 

Tinashe sings from the perspective of a worried lover. “My body hurts with every heartbeat/ Just say I’m not the only one,” she pleads. “C’mon, tell me that you’ve still got the flame for me/ And tell me that you still want to stay: don’t leave.”

Last year, Tinashe released Nightride, which she billed as the first installment of a two-part project. “I see them as two things that are equally the same,” she told Rolling Stone about the two LPs. “I don’t like to be limited to one particular thing so I want to represent that duality and that sense of boundlessness in my art.”