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“TONYA” is the fourteenth track on BROCKHAMPTON’s fourth studio album iridescence. The title and concept of the song are based on the award-winning film I, Tonya, which shares similar themes of unstable stardom.
The song debuted on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on June 20, 2018, with a live performance featuring serpentwithfeet (who also appears on the studio version), Ryan Beatty, and Jazmine Sullivan. This performance came after a month of silence from the group following the removal of ex-member Ameer Vann.
BH produced and wrote the song during a trip to Hawaii following Vann’s departure from the group During screenings of the documentary The Longest Summer in America, bearface mentioned that this song, and the performance on Fallon, were the necessary bridge to help BROCKHAMPTON regain momentum after this tragedy.
While she’s proven herself in the R&B industry with her 7-time Grammy nominated 2008 album Fearless, Sullivan has made a prominent return in the music world by recently serving as a frequent collaborator alongside Frank Ocean, providing vocals and production work on his two most recent albums, Endless and Blonde. Josiah Wise, known professionally as serpentwithfeet, is an experimental musician based in Brooklyn, New York.
BROCKHAMPTON discussed the creation of the song during an extended interview with GQ:
JOBA: For some reason, there was a piano at our Airbnb in Hawaii. I was like, “Sweet, this is what I need right now.”
Kevin: We made “TONYA” in Hawaii, but that was also because we knew we had to do a fucking new song for Jimmy Fallon. Fallon was already booked. We didn’t want to cancel, but it’s like, “We can’t do a hype song. That would be fake.” We had to make something in line with what we were feeling.
Dom: When we were in Hawaii, there was this moment in time where the piano instrumental for “TONYA” was playing on loop, and we just talked for like the entire night, for hours.
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