Justin Stewart Cotta has released a new single ‘Love Yourself,’ showing an alternate stripped back, powerfully emotive side of the artist that delves into finding hope in hopelessness.
A singer songwriter, pianist and guitarist, he was a founding member of
Memento and was the guitarist & keyboardist for VAST. Justin has toured Europe & the U.S. with Queens Of The Stone Age, Marilyn Manson and Ozzy Osbourne among many others.
“For so many of us there has always been a pandemic… depression and anxiety. It has taken some of my closest friends. I have found myself on the edge more than once. I’m just very fortunate to have had a guitar and a melody to talk me down. In a time of isolation and despair, this particular tune became a close friend. I reckon the greatest gift you can offer someone is to give them some hope when they are experiencing utter hopelessness. Through experience and recovery I found that if you nurture that little flicker of love inside you, then you are going to be more able to pass it on to someone who really needs it.
“There was nowhere to hide in the recording and production of ‘Love Yourself’. It’s a relatively dry vocal, and a single take on the guitar. In an era of auto-tune, programming, catchy two-bar loops and synthetics, I wanted to strive for an absolute analogue experience. Not at all from a place of snobbery, but rather to serve a sense of loneliness and warmth within the song. It’s one of the very few times I can honestly say the production and mix are pretty much identical to the song that was originally stuck inside my head” – Justin Stewart Cotta