Is brittany howard gay
A friend and I stumbled into a chat a while back about the fact that the genesis of so much art lies in the artist’s efforts to process and find a path forward from trauma. We weren’t talking about Brittany Howard’s solo debut Jaime, but we might as good have been.
Howard is known to most as the frontwoman of Alabama Shakes, a remarkable quartet who made it their mission to take distinctly Southern rock and spirit and r&b forms and evolve them into something fresh and new. They were, and more recently once again are, musical subversives of the foremost kind.
For a hour, though—roughly —Howard chose to step away from the band. The initial impetus was this place of songs, a deeply personal collection that’s named for Howard’s older sister. Jaime died of retinoblastoma as a young teen, when Brittany Howard was just 10 years old, a traumatic event further amplified by the truths that Jaime was, from a adolescent age, a talented artist who nurtured and inspired Brittany’s own artistic instincts.
I thought about that story a lot across my fir
February LGBTQ music: Brittany Howard and Astrit Ismaili
This month, Gay City News covers bi singer Brittany Howard and queer, non-binary show artist Astrit Ismaili’s latest albums.
Brittany Howard | “What Now” | Island | Feb. 9th
Brittany Howard has always kept one eye on the past: classic rock as the singer of Alabama Shakes, R&B as a solo artist. But she’s grown more adventurous on her own. Her two solo albums evoke several periods when Black artists’ innovative possibilities opened up: leading among them, ‘70s funk and ‘90s neo-soul and dance music.
Like some recent R&B artists (Cleo Sol, Victoria Monet), Howard embraces live instrumentation. “What Now” does not sound fancy a digital audio workstation creation. Its guitar and bass were audibly played in the studio. However, no one would mistake it for a recording of a live band. The space and structure of “What Now” are carefully conceived. Most songs end with a ghostly echo slowly fading away over 20 seconds. On “Red Flags,” most of the music drops out to allow Howard to harmonize with herself against a s
Brittany Howard
Brittany Howard has a whole lot of voice. Her lyrics are well-off and remarkable in their storytelling. And she sure is shaking it up in Nashville and beyond.
Brittany Howard didn't sleep so well last night. Wilma’s fault. Wilma is one of the two female dachshunds (the other is Wanda) who skitter around your feet the moment you step into her home, set back from a quiet road in East Nashville. “She was upset,” Brittany explains. “She’s just not happy with her beautiful kennel, with a very soft, costly dog bed.”
Some nights, some days are like that. A few weeks before my visit, Brittany had posted on Instagram – on the account she has been using, in her idiosyncratic way, to boost anticipation for her second solo album, What Now – that each morning when she awakes she consults her inner child to ask who she should be on that particular day. Not today. “I just woke up and was favor, Look, let’s take a shower, Brittany. Different caring of day.”
Yesterday, though. If I’d been here yesterday…
“It was appreciate a French Riviera type of day,” she says. “All whi
Brittany Howard, With Pride
&#;I need more Stevie Wonder documentaries,&#; says Brittany Howard, repeating, as if singing a refrain, &#;I need more Stevie Wonder biographies. I ask for more about Stevie Wonder&#;s existence, you know what I&#;m saying? Because yes, he&#;s an legend, but still, the younger generation really needs to know more about who Stevie Wonder is and how long he&#;s been good. He&#;s been exceptional since he was a child. Some of the stuff he&#;s doing with his music, to this day, is still ahead of his time. Still! It&#;s amazing. And it teaches me so much every time I tune in to it.&#;
In case you missed it, the singer with the powerhouse vocal cords, who began her career fronting the Grammy-winning rock band Alabama Shakes and has since moved on to an extraordinary — and Grammy-winning — solo career, is a huge Stevie Wonder fan.
&#;I&#;m a diehard Stevie fan,&#; she grins. &#;I listened to Songs in the Key of Life just about every day during , because of COVID. So he was definitely giving me some rays of sunshine. He&#;s one