Teenasai Balamu a.k.a. GrapeGuitarBox has released their third official single ‘Meant To Be Yours’ on 7th May 2020. The track was released as a DIY Lyric and Music video on Rolling Stone India as an Exclusive Premiere on 6th May and is now available to stream on all major platforms.
Meant To Be Yours’ captures THAT time in someone’s life when they’re in the whirlwind of falling for someone. The feelings of a palpitating heart when she walks in front of you, the skip of a beat when he leans in for a kiss. The magic that love manages to create when you know you’re hopelessly falling in love with someone. It’s the very first openly Gay™ love song that Balamu has written! It was also the last song that they finished writing for their EP ‘Out’. They believe that it is their favourite song from the EP because they tried something new with a swing beat and a horn section.
Balamu, a Bangalorean, is currently based out of the UK. They were supposed to fly home from the UK for the Easter break. But due to how (terribly) events have unfolded, their plans changed, and they’re still in London, pining for food from home and hugs from friends. They said,
“All this time indoors got me thinking, and I ended up queuing my 3rd single (‘Meant To Be Yours’) for a release on May 7th. I wrote this song when I was falling in love hard and fast with a person I didn’t think would like me back. 3 years later, this person was helping me make this video and we spent 7 romantic afternoons in the midst of our college assignments, handwriting the lyrics of this song for the video. I could feel all of those palpitations again, being with them, creating and doing the things we love. I hope this song brings back memories for those who listen to it. It did for me. It’s a cutesy, homemade music/lyric video. The idea behind it was to use whatever was available to me. I dug up some old videos of the people and places I missed the most at a time like this. In a way, I wanted to relive these moments while I wait to create new ones after all this settles.”
GrapeGuitarBox’s debut EP ‘Out’ is a 6-track project that musically illustrates stories of heartbreak, toxic relationships, hope, queerness, and the uncertainty of death, all tied together with the overarching concept of love. It was made possible with the help of people like veteran producer M iti Adhikari, Santhos Nataraja , and multiple session musicians. Teenasai Balamu is a non-binary, gay individual from Bengaluru, who is very new to being openly gay. Through ‘Out’, they want to start a conversation on queerness, mental health, being a person of colour, and the important role visibility plays in the career of a queer artist, and how it can make a huge difference to someone who is closeted.
In 2019, Balamu released 2 singles from ‘Out’. Both music videos were crowdfunded. Their second single, ‘Wait For You’, talks about the resilience of love. It’s a simple love song that highlights the intensity and depth of feeling a connection with someone that makes you feel like you’d wait for them forever for the right moment to be with them. The music video brings this concept to life by portraying the story of 2 young, queer, brown women through dance. It was exclusively premiered on Rolling Stone India.
The song was picked up by 3 Spotify Editorial Playlists within 3 days and has now amassed over 55k streams on Spotify alone. Their debut single, ‘Run’ was released as an animated video, and was featured on multiple Spotify Editorial Playlists as well.
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