Paradise Plum

Album: single release (2018)
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Songfacts®:

  • A native of Kingston, Jamaica, Naomi Cowan is the daughter of reggae musicians Tommy Cowan and Carlene Davis, who instilled her with love for the genre. Naomi's breakthrough single is a summertime love song named after a type of Jamaican hard candy.

    "Like the candy the song has so many different layers. 'Paradise' and a bit of a fantasy - a fusion of lover's rock and thug passion… bad gyal in the verse, lady on the chorus," the reggae singer noted on Genius. "My hope for this song is that it transcends boundaries. Everyone deserves that sweet, authentic, Paradise Plum type of love."
  • Cowan worked with producer Teflon Zincfence, who's known for his affiliation with Jamaican artist Chronixx. In the fall of 2017, he brought Cowan the instrumental track and she was immediately reminded of a casual date she had with a guy from Toronto. Although a relationship didn't blossom, they shared a laid-back time together that wasn't burdened by the pressure for conversation or romantic games.

    "We met through mutual friends, so there were no pretenses involved - the time that we spent together that night, we walked around the city, we just went to different coffee shops, we walked into different bars. It was just very organic and not like, okay, I'm on this date. Or I like this guy or like this girl, and let me ask them a series of small-talk questions or anything like that. It was just so down to earth, and that's why I said, 'You, you never put up a fight,' because there were no games in this space - you know, sometimes the games that we play with each other in dating and stuff like that. There were no games," she said on the Songfacts Podcast in 2022.

    "And then the second part where I said, 'You know me like you knew we never had to say a word, not a sound. Silence.' It's because there were some moments in that night where we didn't really try to fill the empty space. I'll never forget we were sitting in a park at one point in time and we're just sitting there and we weren't saying anything and it was okay. I think there's so much beauty in being able to be in silence with people, not just in a romantic setting, but even in general, like with friends and family. You don't always have to fill the space. You can just enjoy the space with somebody else."
  • After coming up with the hook, Cowan brought the idea to her songwriter friend Sarah Couch, and they fleshed out the story together.

    "She and I sat down and she asked me what I was feeling and what we're talking about," Cowan recalled. "We basically embellished the whole story 'cause I didn't really anticipate moving forward with this dude, to be honest. But we embellished it as if the romance continued."
  • The music video, directed by Kia Moses, follows Naomi riding her colorful bicycle, tricked out with speakers pumping out music, through Fleet Street and Life Yard in Kingston, Jamaica.

    Inspired by the song title and fashion clips provided by Naomi, Moses came up with the idea of a fashionable video that presents Jamaica as a candy-colored paradise. She explained in a Facebook Live interview:

    "I also wanted to capture that positive energy in the way that candy is sweet - just that sweet island vibe from positivity and supporting and building each other up as creatives to just this almost utopia where everyone's waving hello. Naomi's riding around on her bicycle waving hello to everyone and everyone's waving back. It's safe, she's in the streets."

    The concept also relates to a budding artist's struggle to get her music out to the public. She added, "I just got this visual of her, the idea of hustling, being in the streets with her music, riding around on a bicycle, and I was like, hmm, let's put speaker boxes on the back that you're jumping the music from, and let's have you do it in heels."

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