Only Human, the new album from Minneapolis singer-songwriter Luke LeBlanc, isn’t out until July 9. But today we’re happy to bring you the premiere of the earthy single “Oh My Lordy.”
The song has the fresh energy you might expect from a 25-year-old, but the wisdom of maturity too. That might not be too much of a surprise, though, given that LeBlanc was the youngest talent ever to win the Zimmy, the Bob Dylan-influenced national singer-songwriter competition held in Hibbing, Minnesota and named after Robert Zimmerman, a.k.a. Bob Dylan. Luke was 13.
He released his first album just two years later (under the stage name Little Diamonds). Only Human is his third full-length. Asked about the album title, LeBlanc explained, “The album touches on everything it means to be ‘only human.’ In these songs, I dive into joy, loss, love, life in general – and the need to sometimes drive away from it all.”
Emblematic of that theme is “Oh My Lordy,” which in a very few words gets at some of the deepest roots of what it is to be human in this world, and why you really might want to drive away from it all. “All my dreams are made from money / All my friends are dollar signs / They can take the world and make it look sunny / But they can’t get you off my mind.”
Luke says he’s “always searching for that something in a song that makes it a little different.” Maybe that’s why, he told us, “‘Oh My Lordy’ was the tough one to record and took us a while to get the sound we wanted. I wrote it a couple years back and hadn’t had many chances to play it with a full band. [Producer] Erik [Koskinen] and I kept pushing on it though – different drum styles, different vocal takes, adding some harmonica – until it made its way to a finished form. Really happy to get it released.”
Good thing Luke likes driving – his tour schedule is rapidly filling up. Check him out at his YouTube channel and on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Only Human is out July 9, 2021.