no na have released island girl, their first album, a week after putting out a near 15-minute piece called speaker freaker (the long song). The record runs to 15 tracks and comes through 88rising, the American label that works mostly with Asian and Asian-American artists and which formed and developed the group.
The four members are Baila, Christy, Esther and Shaz, and the label picked them from different parts of the country on purpose, as a way of putting Indonesia's regional spread into a single act. The name is a play on nona, an Indonesian word meaning miss, which is the sort of detail that only works in the country the group is from.
88rising is billing them as Indonesia's first global girl group, which is a large claim and one the numbers give some cover for. Since the first single arrived in May last year, The Line of Best Fit reports more than half a billion streams, over 1.1 billion views on YouTube and close to five billion on TikTok.
The sound has a name the group gave it themselves. Island Pop is how they describe the blend, and the description is specific rather than vague: tropical warmth from Indonesia set against 1980s R&B, synth-funk and new jack swing. Those are the reference points of a particular decade of American radio, rebuilt somewhere else.
speaker freaker (the long song) was the trailer for all of this and an unusual one. It runs almost fifteen minutes as a musical and visual medley stitching eight songs together, including the viral track rollerblade, alongside work and seven pieces from the album nobody had heard.
The tracklist bears that structure out. island girl opens with star, seafood diet and smooth before the title track, then runs rollerblade straight into rollerblade part two, and takes in work, honk!, dizzy, chaser, party in the +62, speaker freaker, nick of time, durian and better on the island.
Two of those titles do a lot of work on their own. party in the +62 uses Indonesia's international dialling code as a title, and durian names the fruit, which is about as pointed a piece of local signalling as a pop record can manage without translating itself for anybody.
A group arriving with this much streaming volume behind a first album is a specific kind of launch, and the closest recent comparison on this site is KATSEYE's chart entry, another label-assembled group built for more than one country at once. island girl is out now on 88rising and is listed with the autumn's other pop debuts on the release calendar.
The facts
- no na's debut album island girl runs to 15 tracks.
- It is released through 88rising, which formed the group.
- The members are Baila, Christy, Esther and Shaz.
- Each member comes from a different part of Indonesia.
- The name plays on nona, an Indonesian word meaning miss.
- They call their own sound Island Pop.
- The Line of Best Fit reports over half a billion streams since May last year.
- It follows speaker freaker (the long song), a near 15-minute medley of eight songs.
How this checks out
Single source
Reported by a single outlet
Only one outlet has reported it so far, so it stays a single source.
Cited sources 1
Every outlet that reported this, linked to what it published. Equal credits, in alphabetical order.