With a discography that contains nine single releases and an album, emerging New Zealand music artist Iris is primed to enter a next-level phase in her career, and her new track Don’t Wait Up just might be the song to do it. Following the huge success of her last single Lay with You, the new track sits alongside Iris’ previous releases brilliantly, solidifying her catalogue of impressive dance-pop tracks. Don’t Wait Up is another genre-mixing tune, blending elements of pop, dance, and R&B with striking confidence and a seductive yet unifying blend of positivity and finesse.
As Iris has said about Don’t Wait Up, ‘I feel like the temperature of the world definitely could benefit from some uplifting music. All and all, Don’t Wait Up is really about living in the moment, doing things for you. Don’t wait on anybody or for the ‘right’ moment to live your life the way you want it.’
Don’t Wait Up utilises elaborate vocal parts, rhythmic inventiveness, and melodic accessibility to sustain a universal mood and ultimately, a transcendent dance-pop experience. Produced by Charles Lutman and Iris Dunn, and mixed by Tyler Scott, the new track will appease Iris’ followers and no doubt attract many new ones.
The song kicks off with a double chorus, and rightly so, as this is the big hook of the song. Replete with restrained synth and keyboard lines and juxtaposing rhythms amid a backdrop of vocal parts Don’t Wait Up never veers too far from its charted course: a dance track with a pop edge and a direct, emotionally self-assured lyric. As well as utilising a Latin-flavoured feel cloaked in a dance aesthetic, the track is crowned by a shimmering production and Iris’ bare lyric that sets a strident almost brash tone. As Iris tells us, ‘I’m just living for the music, for the moment.’
