There’s a particular kind of song that doesn’t just play in a club; it belongs there, because the genre itself was built by people who needed somewhere to survive the night and come out the other side.
“You’re a Star (Get on Up),” the debut vocal single from classically trained pianist and composer Dominique, out September 25, is aiming for exactly that lineage. Alongside its original mix, the release rolls out across UK house, Afrobeats, Latin fusion reggaeton, disco, Afro house, tropical house, melodic house, funky house, and tech house versions: genres whose roots run straight through the queer and Black underground clubs where house and disco were invented as spaces of refuge, defiance, and joy.
For a listener who has ever needed a 3 a.m. dance floor to feel like themselves again, that context matters. Disco gave queer communities of the 1970s a sound that was theirs before the mainstream caught up and, later, tried to kill it off. House music was born in Chicago’s Black gay clubs as disco’s direct descendant, a genre engineered for release. Dominique’s decision to send one song through nearly a dozen of these lineages isn’t just a marketing footprint. It’s a way of making sure the record can find its people wherever they’re dancing, from a Brooklyn warehouse party to a Fire Island afternoon set.
The song’s backstory gives that architecture real weight. Dominique, who grew up on the East Side of Columbus, Ohio, and now lives in North Hollywood, spent his early life immersed in classical music; picking out melodies by ear at three years old, later serving as principal bassoonist in the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra. But “You’re a Star (Get on Up)” didn’t come out of that world. It was written on the edge of his bed roughly two and a half hours before he recorded it, at the tail end of what he calls the hardest period of his life.
After losing both parents to cancer in quick succession — his mother died in his arms — Dominique found himself unmoored, eventually experiencing homelessness and addiction. “So many times I would be outside watching everyone walk by, ignoring everything happening and judging people over silly things like material possessions,” he says. “Sitting there with nothing, while no one would listen to anything I had to say, I knew I still had everything. I was still everything. I was greater in that moment than I had ever been before; just in disguise as a man who had no home.”
That’s the emotional center the dance mixes are built to carry: not escapism for its own sake, but the specific relief of being told, loudly and repeatedly, that you are worth something when the world has told you otherwise. “It’s the commanding voice inside that I had to find and listen to in order to get out of that situation,” Dominique says of the song’s title. “It’s like I’m going back in time to tell myself to wake up, get on up, and remember exactly who I am; and not believe what life or society or trauma had tried to turn me into.” It’s a message that will land familiarly for anyone who has had to build a self worth keeping after being told, explicitly or otherwise, that who they are isn’t acceptable. It’s an experience plenty of queer listeners know from the inside.
Dominique co-produced the single and its full remix package with electronic producer Velvet Code, whose credits include remix work on Lady Gaga’s Chromatica. “There were elements of the record that required the skill and artistry of another person, and Velvet brought exactly that,” Dominique says. “He never tried to change who I was as an artist. He helped bring my vision to life and elevate it.”
Even the vocal take reflects that same commitment to something unpolished and real: Dominique chose to leave his breaths and small imperfections in the final mix rather than scrub them out. “I don’t mind leaving in the things that show it really happened, that it was a person who did all of that,” he says.
Dominique describes “You’re a Star (Get on Up)” as an invitation to “experience joy through music and dance, reconnect with who they truly are, and find freedom in the present moment”; three things the dance floor has always promised its regulars, whatever door they walked through to get there.
“You’re a Star (Get on Up)” and its Afrobeats mix land September 25 on all major streaming platforms, with additional remixes following October 9 and October 16.
