Khalid is on the cusp of releasing new music, and today he’s premiered his forthcoming single at the Virgin Galactic space launch.
Virgin founder Richard Branson and five others hopped aboard the Unity 22 Virgin Galactic rocket place that successfully managed to fly to space and back.
During a livestream emceed by Stephen Colbert, Khalid took to the stage at the New Mexico launch site to perform a string of his tracks, like ‘Better’ and ‘Talk’.
He also premiered new single ‘New Normal’ at the event, ahead of its release on Wednesday July 21.
Watch the full livestream below, with Khalid taking the stage at around the 01hr 20min mark.
“Writing the song ‘New Normal’ was my way of coping with the anxiety and coping with the misunderstanding,” Khalid told Rolling Stone of the song.
“I had to come to terms with who I was as an individual and the type of person that I wanted to be. And to me, this song, it just embodies hope for the outcome of our future.”
He also spoke about the song’s inspiration to Rolling Stone, which directly ties in with today’s launch.
“Around this time last year, I was super fascinated and gravitated toward space. I was watching this comet by the name of Neowise last year, and space travel is something that I’ve always been interested in as well,” he said.
“And I’ve been going through the motions of understanding this new, postmodern future that’s coming together, especially when it comes down to technology — it’s something that really excites me.”
Later this month, Khalid will be playing Australian virtual festival Splendour XR, along with The Killers, Charli XCX, Phoebe Bridgers and more.
