Fresh off his ARIA nomination for Best Soul/R&B Release, BOY SODA is staking his claim in the new wave of soul and R&B with Soulstar, his highly anticipated debut album, released today (October 3rd) via Warner Music Australia.
A 13-track odyssey of love, grief, celebration, and self-discovery, Soulstar is a bold and genre-blurring statement from the 27-year-old.
“This is the story of me and how I think and love at 27,” BOY SODA, or Brae Luafalealo, tells Rolling Stone AU/NZ. “There’s so much to say at all times in your life, but I feel particularly compelled to put a stamp on this era. Soulstar expresses that with emotional truth… It’s all been captured and painted in full musical colour, which was not easy to do. Wanting to be truthful and move in love, even around topics like anger and grief, was really important and a blueprint quality in making it.”
The soulful Sydney-based artist has continued his rapid rise following the release of funky R&B single “Lil’ Obsession” earlier this year, which has since has racked up nearly 4 million streams worldwide. It features on the album, alongside follow up singles “Blink Twice”, “Never the Same”, and “4K”.
Each track showcases a different facet of intimacy and emotion, serving their own purposes and living in different moments of the day, according to BOY SODA. “I cried so much recording [some of them]. I believe different tracks find us in the moments they’re supposed to,” he says.
Over two to three years, BOY SODA confronted deeply personal topics he had long avoided: breaking generational cycles, grief in life and relationships, self-talk, and the balance of masculine and feminine within him.
“[These are] all things that deserve to be written about with honour and dignity,” he says. “I’d been avoiding looking at these topics with a magnifying glass to really break them down, so being able to express them and feel like I was ready to do that in a way that would do them justice, was a relief.”
Love Music?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian/New Zealand music and globally.
That process wasn’t just about lyricism — it was about finding the language, the visuals, and the sound that best represented him as an artist. “I think self-expression is the ability to curate the life that comes from within us, and my only goal as an artist is to be in touch with that output,” he explains. “For Soulstar, it’s the first time I’ve had the vocab or the ability to notate certain elements in me, and I’m really proud of how that all arrived on a visual, styling and musical level — it all feels very intuitively correct and divinely aligned.”
The blind faith he carried into the project, combined with that commitment to truth, organically shaped the Soulstar fans now get to experience.
He recalls “pulling on an invisible string” that led to the finished product, having had no what what it would look or sound like: “It took and gave so much to me making Soulstar, and all of those exchanges felt necessary revelations in both artistic and emotional ways.”
Having already brought Soulstar to life with a sold-out, raw, and unfiltered show at Sydney’s Lazybones earlier this week, BOY SODA is now gearing up for further shows, including at Melbourne’s The Evelyn next week, and festival appearances at Changing Tides, Panorama, and Beyond the Valley later this year.
As for what comes next? “Nothing, just be present with me on this one first! We’ll cross that bridge together at a later date. I’ve already started new music, so it’s in our timelines, don’t worry,” he says.
BOY SODA’s Soulstar is out now.
