Review; MILA - "Queen Of The Hive"

Opening with a understated hip hop beat, leisurely indie guitar and playful synths, "Queen Of The Hive" is a perfect example of why Essex artist MILA is one of the most exciting new artists around right now. Each element of the instrumentation compliments each other faultlessly, giving life to MILA's festival-worthy, genre-bending bedroom-pop sound. A subtle boost to the bass and additional vocal layers emphasise the chorus, a section in which a catchy, memorable melody is added to the rapped vocals.

As well as writing and performing the track, MILA further highlights his multitude of musical skills by producing the track, with additional assistance from Gethin Pearson. There is a clean, crisp quality to the production, and a clarity that ensures each aspect of the instrumentation is heard on an individual level whilst also blending perfectly as one.

It's always great to take some sort of positive out of a negative situation, and "Queen Of The Hive" is a nugget of positivity to draw from the everlasting lockdown of 2020. As MILA explains, the track was born after binge watching Netflix during those months, and brings forth a message of overcoming boundaries - something many people feel they need to hear right now.

When talking about the track, MILA states; "I wrote Queen of the Hive after watching 5 seasons of a show on Netflix in just 1 or 2 weeks. Looking back I think I might have got a bit too obsessed with it all, but it was a good waste of some of the lockdown, and I suppose I gained a song out of it. The song is about overcoming boundaries which can get in the way of the end product or goal someone is trying to achieve; and ways to overcome them.

I make all of the MILA music at home; first working on the beat which is how this track started off and then adding the lyrics. I got stuck with this track for a while as it wasn’t really materialising the way it was in my head so Gethin Pearson stepped in and added some additional production and understood what I was going for (we communicated over WhatsApp so he had to deal with me humming 808 patterns into the voice notes of our chat)."

Listen to 'Queen Of The Hive' here

MILA heads out on his debut tour in February 2021, tickets available here

Words by Alex Vickers