by Kolapo Olapoju

Nigerian international singer, Asa is set to release her third album, ‘Bed of stone’ on the 25th of August, and the singer is currently on work-mode, promoting the album and the first single ‘Dead again’.

Asa says the songs on her new album were born from her life and the shock she felt coming off the road in 2012, after an exhausting tour of over 100 shows in 2012.

“I needed time to pull myself together. I toured for 2 years, gave everything I had every single night. I had been the girl that was full of life, force and energy that people looked at for 2 hours on stage, and then congratulated backstage after the show. But I was going home alone, never really realizing how exhausting all that actually is”, she said.

After the tour, she said she couldn’t stay at home, so she traveled to some major capitals of the world.

“I wanted to feel human again. Meet new people and do everything I always wanted to do before I hit 30. I wanted to learn to swim, rent a car and drive from Nashville to New York and from New York to Los Angeles and I wanted to learn to skateboard and drive a motorcycle”.

While travelling, she was recording and writing at the same time, and with an almost finished album, Asa met up with longtime collaborator, Benjamin Constant who had arranged her first 2 studio albums, meanwhile, she also got to feel new emotions and experience new things.

“I wanted to be the old lady that falls from a skateboard with kids all around her, go full throttle on a motorcycle for the first time in my life. These experiences didn’t necessarily make it into my songs, but they served a purpose. It’s all there! I’ve matured.”

Watch below video of Asa performing an acoustic version of the lead single “Dead Again”;

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUDAxUb1hyM]