Listen to Joy Williams' Solo Single "Woman (Oh Mama)" After Her Split with Civil Wars

By Timothy Yap Apr 07, 2015 02:10 AM EDT

It was a sad day when Civil Wars announced their split last year. However, one half of the folk-pop group, Joy Williams is back with her first solo single after the split. Joy Williams has been hard at work in the studio working on her debut album, Venus. She has just released the lead track, "Woman (Oh Mama)", and announced that Venus will be released midsummer via Columbia Records.

"The entire song is what it's like to experience the beauty, the spark and strength of what it is to be inside your skin," Williams said in a press release. "It's a song with energy and fire. I wanted to own the complexity and the three dimensional aspect of what it is to be a woman. 'I am a universe wrapped in skin' ... That's one of my favorite lines from the new album. I'm excited about being a woman. I'm excited to be where I am now, who I am now."

Prior to her time as part of the Civil Wars, Williams was a contemporary Christian artist. She was nominated for 11 Dove Awards and she three records she released three Christian records on Reunion cumulatively sold more than 250,000 albums. Some of her notable Christian songs include "Joy," "Surrender," "Serious," "Hide," "We," "I Believe in You" and "Every Moment."

In 2005 she left the label, noting that her perspective had changed considerably since she had started recording for Reunion at 17. "My worldview shifted like tectonic plates from 17 to mid-twenties, and over time, I just started to feel less and less comfortable with the type of music I was making. I wanted to write things that moved me and not feel like I had any parameters telling me what to do or not to do," she said in a 2014 interview.

Take a listen to "Woman (Oh Mama)" below.