Eurovision 2016 – Switzerland

Tucked away in the vast hills and deep lakes near Zürich, Switzerland, and in the Canadian wilderness surrounding Vancouver, Rykka has been honing her next sound.

She has been on a wild ride since the release of her 2013 album Kodiak. That same year, she won the prestigious Peak Performance Project competition and made multiple tours across Canada and Europe.

Change is a constant for the multitalented songwriter, who started as an acoustic folk artist under her name Christina Maria before reinventing herself as Rykka and emerging with an alternative pop bang. Since then, her restless ambition has driven her underground where she has been writing feverishly using keyboards and drum machines. She has split her time between Switzerland and Canada, sometimes traveling to Los Angeles and London for co-writing sessions.

Having stockpiled over a hundred demos, she brought the best of these songs to producer Warne Livesey, with whom she hunkered down in Toronto’s Coalition Music studios, located in a building that used to be a convent.

The resulting album is Beatitudes, which marks a thrilling leap in a bold new direction for Rykka. Its towering hooks come bolstered by dazzling synths and beats tailor-made for dropping sweat on the dance floor. “Movies” is a breath-catching whirlwind of chopped-up vocal melodies, slinky grooves and seductive mega-choruses, while “Runnin’ Away” ventures into hip-hop terrain with its throbbing 808 programming, and “Shapes in the Dark” is a full-blown banger with thumping four-on-the-floor rhythms.

The overhauled production approach highlights the depth of Rykka’s songwriting: “Bad Boy” is a soaring portrait of doomed romance, while “100 Years” is a open-hearted examination mortality in which the vocalist sweetly sighs, “I want to live to in the present / Rather burn out brightly than live forever fading.”

Beatitudes takes its title from the Latin word for “happiness” and shares its name with eight blessings from the bible, although Rykka’s use of the term is secular. “Beatitudes is about empowering the underdog,” she reflects. “Good and evil lines are blurred, and staying true to ourselves is our only real compass.”

Soldier, take off your armour
Show me your heart, this is home
And it’s stronger, stronger than water
Deeper than reason, longer than time

Here we are at the end of the movie, I’ve never felt more alive
It’s time to rise
We’re the last of our kind

It’s a whole new world, and we’re facing the fire
Not afraid of our own ghosts,
We’re The Last Of Our Kind
and we’re all that we know
And we’re out of our minds
Not afraid to be brave though,
We’re The Last Of Our Kind

The Last Of Our Kind
The Last Of Our Kind
Not afraid to be brave
We’re The Last Of Our Kind

This is paradise, turn off the searchlight
We’re where we belong.

Standing tall at the end of the story,
Watching world’s collide
It’s time to rise
We’re The Last Of Our Kind

It’s a whole new world, and we’re facing the fire
Not afraid of our own ghosts,
We’re The Last Of Our Kind
and we’re all that we know
And we’re out of our minds
Not afraid to be brave though,
We’re The Last Of Our Kind

Here we are now, with nothing to lose
I know without love, we won’t pull through, oh
Cause deep in the night, there is a light
And it guides us to truth.

It’s a whole new world, and we’re facing the fire
Not afraid of our own ghosts,
We’re The Last Of Our Kind
and we’re all that we know
And we’re out of our minds
Not afraid to be brave though,
We’re The Last Of Our Kind

The Last Of Our Kind
The Last Of Our Kind
Not afraid to be brave
We’re The Last Of Our Kind