I Am Nova started in 2012, though the duo — comprised of Carl-Oscar Korenado and Jonathan Larsson — first meant each either at six years old back in 1998. While the project initially started as just a pure side-project for fun, they unexpectedly started garnering local attention with their single “I Need,” inspiring them to continue writing.
Then came their second single, “Strangers,” which helped them push their fan-base to a national level, and opened the door for I Am Nova to tour and bring their brand of indie-rock across Sweden. Their live shows are performed with anywhere from 6 to 9 members in their live band, casting an unrivaled high energy that leaves fans wanting more during every show.
Things have gotten tougher for I Am Nova as time has gone by, as they are now living in different parts of the world: Korenado moved to New York City and then subsequently to Iceland as a professional football player while Larsson started behind in Sweden to study music production and sound engineering. Despite this, they never gave up on their shared passion for creating music, and that dedication stayed despite the distance between them. The two have now spent months and months together in the studio, letting go of everything else. “We actually trace it all back to when we were 15 years old and saw Mando Diao live at Malmöfestivalen. At this age, life could be a big blur and we struggled to distilguish between what’s real and not. But the energy we received from standing in the crowd that night filled us both with a drive to create that feeling ourselves,” the band shares.
The result of this hard work was the band’s latest single, “Good Enough,” which was released back in September of this year. Now, we are excited to be partnering with I Am Nova to bring you their new single “Gotta Be You,” which you can check out below. The song is another catchy indie-rock tune from the band, lead by a slick guitar and complimentary instruments, crafting a song that sounds retro yet new all at once.
“We wrote ‘Gotta Be You’ about a friend of ours who always seemed have a feeling of loneliness after midnight — especially on weekends. He felt a desperate need for romance and affection, but at the same time he didn’t want to seem needy or desperate. One night when we were at a bar together with him, he walked up to a girl and delivered the phrase: ‘I need a girl, and it’s gotta be you.’ It’s a very interesting sentence because ‘I need a girl’ is very desperate, but when he adds ‘It’s gotta be you,’ he thinks that he manages to not seem desperate anymore, but just really into this one girl. This became an inside joke to us, and we decided to write a song about it. The song is incredibly fun to play live, and the crowd always seem to sing along and somehow relate to the lyrics. Maybe we all have a friend like that, boy or girl.”
You can keep up with I Am Nova on Facebook, Instagram, and Spotify.
