Out Now: Ayanna Witter-Johnson Launches a New Era With “You Can Have Everything”

MOBO-nominated singer-songwriter, cellist and composer Ayanna Witter-Johnson is back with her first solo release in three years — and it’s out now. Released via her Hill and Gully Records imprint, “You Can Have Everything” opens a bold new chapter in Ayanna’s sound: intimate and alternative in the vein of British soul visionaries like Anaïs and Laura Mvula, while tipping its hat to the instrument-led jazz/vocal crossover of Esperanza Spalding and Meshell Ndegeocello.

At the heart of the track is Ayanna’s defining relationship with the cello, which acts as both rhythmic engine and emotional compass — a bass-like, percussive force that grounds the song in the body as much as the spirit. First sparked while living in Paris in 2020, just before the world shut down, the song took shape amid a growing sense of restriction, lost freedom and uncertainty. What emerged is a quiet act of rebellion: a fantasy of hope and expansiveness, a reminder that even when movement is limited, the imagination can still run wild.

Ayanna explains: “The beauty of music and all art is the chance to inhabit your imagination and create a dreamworld of limitless abundance. An antidote to the often relentless nature of day-to-day life and all the challenges it brings. This song is one of those moments where for a few minutes you can imagine having whatever it is that you want!”

A second-generation Jamaican born in Britain, Ayanna’s work celebrates heritage, culture and identity through music that’s both deeply rooted and fearlessly inventive. Often credited as a one-woman orchestra — singer, songwriter, pianist, cellist and composer — she moves seamlessly between classical, jazz, reggae, soul and R&B, tapping, strumming and bowing her cello beneath a voice that’s rich, grounded and transcendent.

Her music has been championed by tastemakers and icons from Gilles Peterson to Jools Holland, and her career includes collaborations and tours with legends such as Andrea Bocelli, Peter Gabriel, Nitin Sawhney and Anoushka Shankar. With standout televised performances on Later… with Jools Holland, the BBC Proms, and Sing It Loud: Black and Proud, plus compositions for the London Symphony Orchestra, Ayanna continues to redefine what modern British soul can be. A graduate of Trinity Laban Conservatoire and the Manhattan School of Music, she also made history as the only non-American to win Amateur Night Live at Harlem’s Apollo Theater — using the prize money to fund her first EP.

“You Can Have Everything” is out now via Hill and Gully Records.