Chicago singer Simone Green releases Breathe from the album BLACK QUEEN

Simone Green has released Breathe, a single about the point where somebody decides a relationship has cost them enough. The Chicago vocalist, songwriter and cultural storyteller put it out on 19 August 2026, and SoulTracks gave it a First Listen the same day.

The relationship in the song is not specified as a romantic one or a working one, and that is deliberate. SoulTracks writer Darnea N. Samuels framed the track around a feeling anyone who has reached enough is enough would recognise, personal or professional.

Love has not gone out of the picture in Breathe. Green sings about a partnership that is no longer serving her, one that has turned toxic, and about taking back control by leaving the person holding her down. In the lyric, the realisation arrives before she changes her last name.

Breathe was written by Green with Jeffrey Dillard, who also produced it. SoulTracks described it as inspired by the complicated and sometimes intense relationship trouble a woman goes through, and by the healing that has to follow.

The single comes from BLACK QUEEN, Green's new album. She says she made it after surviving breast cancer twice, building businesses, leading bands and working in an industry that she says often asks women, and Black women in particular, to make themselves smaller. She wanted a body of work that celebrated power rather than pain.

Breathe is on the release calendar with the month's other R&B and soul singles, among them Kuzi Cee's Ember (Remind Me) and Sean Jones' Body.

"This album is a love letter to Black women who have earned every crown they wear," Green said of BLACK QUEEN.