Gia Ford Releases 'Transparent Things' Debut Album

With a ringing endorsement from Sir Elton John—“beautiful record, beautiful songs”—GIA FORD has released her debut album, TRANSPARENT THINGS. Recorded in Los Angeles at the renowned Sound City Studios with legendary producer Tony Berg (Phoebe Bridgers’ Stranger in the Alps and Punisher), TRANSPARENT THINGS is an immersive collection that showcases the British singer and songwriter’s ability to craft songs like no other artist of her generation.

For GIA, the figures on the fringes of society are by far the most fascinating. Her songs tell the stories of the downtrodden to the downright dangerous. And through them, we begin to hear familiar, uncomfortable truths about ourselves.  The theme of alienation runs through the album.

“Most of the characters in these songs are outcasts, all with unique ways of feeling on the periphery, somehow,” GIA says. While each song operates in its own realm, their subject matters create a throughline of eccentricity that turns TRANSPARENT THINGS into an odyssey of outcasts.

Arguably no song better encapsulates the character of “the other” than the single “Paint Me Like a Woman.’” The song is from the perspective of a woman who feels herself morphing into the villain as a result of abuse and mistreatment at the hands of all the men in her life.  

GIA explains: “It is a look inside her mind as she feels herself drifting away from who she really is; allowing her rage to weave itself into the fabric of her being. It's a comment on how we hurt each other, how we change each other, and a question: who gets punished for this terrible nature we have all, to varying degrees, embodied?”