Raise your hands to Miss Velvet's ‘Hallelujah'

The Citizen

28-04-2025

Imagine launching your music starting with the conclusion of the story your are trying to tell. Miss Velvet did exactly that.
Imagine launching your music into a country or a new market somewhat backwards, starting with the conclusion of the story you are trying to tell.
American solo artist Miss V has done exactly that, entering the South African market for the first time by releasing the final song in a trilogy of audio-visual material before local audiences had even heard the first note.
Her debut on South African airwaves is called Hallelujah, and it ends-out out a three-part project titled Triptych, a conceptual body of work built around transformation, identity, and emotional release.
The track was co-written and produced by Grammy-nominated, South African-born producer Esjay Jones, who also serves as Miss Velvet's guitarist and creative collaborator.
Unconventional career trajectory
New York-born Constance Hauman, better known to international audiences as Miss Velvet, has followed an unconventional creative trajectory.
A former opera singer with a successful classical music career under her belt, she made a U-turn to rock and pop, finding global attention with her band Miss Velvet & The Blue Wolf and releases like Feed The Wolf and Dare.
Now, with Hallelujah, Miss Velvet segued again. This time, to a less gritty and more stripped-down spiritual confrontation.
'Hallelujah is the final breath of Triptych, the place where the reckoning falls away, and what remains is elemental,' she said. 'It's not about triumph. It's about truth.'
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'The journey behind the song was deeply personal,' said Miss Velvet.
'I had gone through a rupture in my life that altered everything—something tied to betrayal and motherhood, something I couldn't fully hold alone. So, I gave it to Miss Velvet (sic). She carried it for me. She made it mythic, safe, sacred. It's not a song about triumph—it's a song about truth.
'It's about putting your hand in someone else's and saying: I see you. You're not alone. The ageing is divine. The ending is a beginning. And we'll be singing until the end.
'That's what full-circle acceptance means to me—not rewriting what happened but standing in the middle of the Mojave Desert—surrounded by wind, silence, and sky—and letting the truth rise from the dust. Letting it break you open. Letting it make you whole.'
Truth rises from the dust
The Triptych series, released in full this week, comprises three tracks. They are: Pistols at Dawn, Strut, and Hallelujah.
Each chapter or song tells a story about a different stage in emotional evolution: the reckoning, the reclamation, and the release.
'With Triptych, we stepped into completely new territory. I had the vision before we ever wrote the music, and Esjay said yes to something that didn't exist yet. We weren't just writing songs. We were building a sonic landscape for a visual film that lived only in my mind. That kind of trust is rare.
'Miss Velvet rarely sees this kind of creative courage,' she said.
We weren't just writing songs
A short film version of the project was shot in the Mojave Desert. It has already picked up a Best Music Video award at the International New York Film Festival.
Esjay Jones, based in the U.S. but originally from Durban, spent two years working with Miss Velvet. They were both living and creating under the same roof.
'When you truly know an artist, their struggles, their triumphs, the way they see the world, then you create differently,' said Jones. 'You're not just producing a song; you're channelling their essence.'
Jones said that Hallelujah is 'pure catharsis'.
It's about release, about shedding the weight of the past and stepping into something greater,' she shared.
The track itself is built on acoustic instrumentation, ambient textures and gospel undertones.
In the video, Miss Velvet appears on a circular white stage. It's in the desert, dressed in a white Tom Ford three-piece suit.
She called it a 'a garment that once represented control, dominance, and masculine authority, repurposed in a space of surrender.' It's not subtle, and it was not meant to be. It's visual artistry all round.
It's visual artistry all around
In producing the track, Jones said the challenge was balancing the 'grit and grandeur' of Velvet's sound.
'Her voice has this wild rock quality but also a soulful, almost gospel-like depth. We leaned into both, making it feel timeless and urgent.'
This is Miss Velvet's introduction to local audiences, but she has long been fascinated by South Africa.
'I hope South African audiences feel the honesty of the song and not just in the sound, but in the intention,' she said. 'The spiritual thread that connects us all, regardless of where we come from, is what this song is made of.'
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