Japanese girl group XG have dropped a piano version of their viral song ‘Is This Love’.
The Japanese septet, who appeared on a January 2025 issue of NME‘s The Cover, released the new version of ‘Is This Love’ on March 7. It dropped as a digital single, alongside a re-release of the original song and instrumental copies of both versions. ‘Is This Love’ was originally released in November 2024 on the girl group’s ‘AWE’ album.
The piano version of ‘Is This Love’ is notably stripped back from the original, with only the piano serving as its source of instrumentation aside from XG’s voices. “I ain’t playin’ no games, I mean what I say / Got you on my mind, if you feel the same / Won’t you swing my way? Baby, don’t make me wait / I don’t know if it’s meant to be, but it feels like everythin’,” they belt on the pre-chorus.
The ‘AWE’ album was led by title track ‘Howling’, and included the singles ‘IYKYK’ and ‘Something Ain’t Right’. The record also includes a remix of their May 2024 single ‘Woke Up’ featuring Korean and Japanese hip-hop artists like Jay Park, OZworld, AKLO, Paloalto, VERBAL, Awich, Tak and Dok2.
XG are currently in the final throes of their 2024 to 2025 ‘The First Howl’ world tour, with upcoming shows in Fukuoka, Osaka and encore shows in several cities across China before they head to Latin America for two shows this April. XG will also be performing at Coachella this year, making them the only Japanese act on the bill.
XG first debuted in 2022 with the single ‘Tippy Toes’. The group went on to release singles like ‘Mascara’ and ‘Shooting Star’ before dropping their first mini-album ‘New DNA’, led by the single ‘Puppet Show’ last September.
Reneé Rapp is seen as a “huge inspiration” by SZA.
The 25-year-old artist performed SZA’s Good Days in the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge, accompanied by two acoustic guitarists and a harp player. SZA, 35, was deeply moved by the rendition.
She posted a short video of the moment on Instagram Stories and wrote: “Renee is a HUGE inspiration, energy, voice spirit.”
During her chat with the BBC, Renee shared her thoughts about the track. She said: “I mean, I love SZA. I mean, she was one of my favorite artists in high school. And she's remained one of my favorite artists to this day. I think she's amazing. She's also, I mean, she's an incredible songwriter, but I think because she has so much swag. People don't realize how good of a singer she is. She's a fantastic vocalist and is really, really, really articulate. And I don't cover a lot of songs anymore. So I wanted to cover something that was, like, slightly challenging and also really vocally impressive, and frankly, hard for me to do.”
Renee is currently in the middle of promoting her second album, Bite Me, and opened up about how much more enjoyable it was to create compared to her first project.
She explained: “I mean, I feel like everything was incredibly different. I stopped listening to people that don't make music, because if you don't make music, then why the hell am I listening to you. And I also think the biggest difference, I think I just got a lot better. I think I have just become a better songwriter. I think I understand how to make pop music now in a way that I didn't really before. And I was very sure about what this album was and thematically, what it needed.
“So I felt like I was quite like, headstrong in like, what was gonna work and what wasn't. Because, nobody knows something better than yourself. I think a lot of things were different. I also just, like, had a lot of fun making it, like, I made it with like, three people, mostly, like, it was always like, four of us in the studio all the time, and we got so close, and some of us were already so close. So it was also just like a mess. It was such a mess, like we were just tweaking every day. It was so fun. And I don't think I enjoyed making the first one as much.”
