“The title concerns acceptance and moving on,” TIA RAY tells Apple Music about her 2026 album NEW DAY. “It’s about the courage to believe and love again after pain and tears.” While the name might suggest an ironic contrast to songs concerned with the vulnerability, insecurity, loss and alienation of modern emotional relationships, the singer’s intent is a little more subtle. “A ‘new day’ is neither a denial of the past nor blind optimism,” she says. “To me, it means carrying all of the past—both good and bad—forward with you. Only by experiencing the cold can you truly understand warmth.” The album is the singer’s first LP performed entirely in English. “For me, making an English-language album was a process of rediscovering myself rather than a spur-of-the-moment decision,” she says. “Listening to Western music was where I started from. The grooves and vocal stylings of R&B and soul are in my bones.” Around that R&B core, the artist incorporates a range of genres—future bass on “HEART SHAPED HOLE”, bluesy accents on “CALL ME” and Afrobeats on “PRESSURE”—all brought together by her expressive delivery. “If the album sounds like a unified whole, it’s because my voice and emotions are consistent,” she says. “I was more vocally adventurous on this album. I sung more forcefully on ‘PRESSURE’, while on certain songs I processed my vocals more like an instrument. Unlocking more possibilities for my voice was a blast.” Creating the album involved stints in the US collaborating with acclaimed songwriters and producers. “The stimulation was best thing about working with them,” TIA RAY says. “They all respected my voice and didn’t put me on rails. It was collaborative creation, both international and ‘me’.” Although the album took over three years to complete, she enjoyed how songs emerged naturally from the collaborative process. The harmony-drenched ballad “BEAUTIFUL DAY”, for example, took shape one laidback day in Los Angeles. “I thought about how it feels when the sky clears after the rain and your mind is clean and bright. The melody came quickly,” she says. An emotional and musical counterpart to that track’s lush positivity is the acoustic track “COLD”. “It depicts feeling alone in a crowd,” she says. “Not a dramatic outburst but a quiet, bone-chilling cold. When I sing it, I’m embracing the self that feels that cold. I hope people who hear it will feel understood, since that feeling isn’t unique to me.”