Elana Brody Releases Euphoric Dance-Pop Single: “Rock Steady’

NY-based singer-songwriter Elana Brody ties the beauty and ecstasy of the human experience to the wonders of the natural world in her new single and video for “Rock Steady.”

A euphoric dance-pop single produced by Max Martin protégé Dominic Fallacaro, the song has been something of a beautiful interruption in Elana’s personal and artistic journey, from the initial inspiration to the filming of the music video in Costa Rica this summer.

“The song tells the story of taking a risk to follow my heart and my dreams to be with a rock’n’roll drummer who I had a crush on for years,” Elana reveals.

“This song is about feeling the sexuality, the sensuality, and asking myself a question – is this my guy, or do I just want a rhythm to ride?”

Elana was set to release a stripped-back Americana EP, full of contemplative ballads written during the pandemic that blend social activism, Jewish spirituality, herbalism, and folklore – but she felt a world battered by politics and the pandemic needed something else this summer.

“A lot of my music grapples with love, spirituality, and existential longings, but when I played “Rock Steady”, it got people to dance,” Elana explains.

“In both the prayer world and the pop world, I want to pull people in and bring an energy that elevates people with passion, intensity, and lightness.”

“Rock Steady” unpacks 10 years of pent-up longing in just over three minutes. Elana and the song’s subject had been friends and musical collaborators for years, with chemistry that went beyond the stage and the studio. The pair kept a lid on their feelings and stayed professional in their musical projects, but after Elana had a dream that she surprised her crush by showing up to a performance, she summoned the chutzpah to make the dream come true by hopping a plane, unannounced, to one of his gigs on tour. The moment their eyes locked while he was onstage was just as magical as she had dreamed.

The video for “Rock Steady” brings this narrative vibrantly alive, sweeping the viewer away to a Costa Rican beachside paradise, where Elana and a posse of dancers are found lockstep in choreographed pageantry. Her lyrics in this context feel both heart-racingly urgent and fantastically transporting:

“Rhythm pulls me under with a hard force,” she sings. “bodies shaking on the dance floor, you’re making me want more.”

“Rock Steady” is a vignette in a life story filled with profound transformation, and emotional boldness. Elana grew up in rural Virginia in the least populated county east of the Mississippi River. There, she learned to sing with family and friends sitting around the campfire where she saw the power of music to bring people together firsthand. She picked up piano as a youngster, then guitar, and by the time she turned twelve, she’d begun writing her own songs. After graduating from an arts high school, Elana traded the country for the city, relocating to Boston in order to enroll at the Berklee College of Music.

The desire to play and experience music firsthand pulled her away from the venerated institution. After a brief stint on the road, Elana packed her bags and headed to New York City. There, she began playing every open mic night she could find and busking on street corners and subway platforms, drawing audiences in with intuitive, improvised performances that channeled a magnetism deep within her subconscious. That intuitive magnetism would also serve Elana well in later years when she began exploring her spiritual side, delving into Judaism, and learning to use the power of her voice to lead others in prayer.

“For most of my life, my spiritual fulfillment came from music and nature and creativity,” she shares. “As I started cultivating my relationship with the Jewish tradition and learning to pray and sing in Hebrew, I experienced this total awakening. I discovered a whole new community and a whole new way of connecting with the wholeness of the universe.”

Today, her spirituality courses through both the secular and the sacred with a poignant purposefulness. Whether it’s a slow-burn track about grief and heartache or an exhilarating pop song about the power of dance, her work offers a sense of wholeness—a belief that all things in this world are bound by something greater.

“Everything has been about leaps of faith,” Elana reveals. “I took a leap of faith that I could find a home in connecting with my Judaism, and circling back to ‘Rock Steady,’ this song – from its start to the choosing of the producer, to the making of the music video, to the release, also involved a series of leaps of faith.”