Now, the singer-songwriter is kicking off a brand new era of her career with " Four Letter Words ," a rocked-out kiss-off to those who would take away from her accomplishments. The track, which comes with a a brilliantly-animated new video, serves as a teaser for K.
Flay says the album is "a way for me to exorcise some demons and safely express these uncomfortable but very human emotions. Flay is even taking her show on the road -- starting in early , the artist is embarking on a date North American tour, with shows in Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, Denver, St. Louis and more check out the singer's website for more information. With a new song out, and a forthcoming EP announced, K. Flay took Billboard 's LGBTQuestionnaire -- a series of questions, fill-in-the-blanks, multiple choice answers and so forth -- to help fans get to know her just a little bit better.
Multiple Choice answers are in italics. Rarely Occasionally Constantly I'm looking at it right now. Not remotely important I do it but I don't love it Important, but I have mixed feelings about it Essential and I mostly love it. No way I guess Who can tell? Fill in the blank answers are in bold font. As I say in the song -- I'm usually nice.
I pride myself on being a polite and friendly person. But I have moments when I just can't take it anymore -- when I want to scream and do something reckless.
I wrote this song at a time when I was feeling that pent-up frustration. Aggressive Bittersweet Druggy. Energetic Happy Hypnotic. Romantic Sad Sentimental. Sexy Trippy All Moods. Drinking Hanging Out In Love. Introspection Late Night Partying. Rainy Day Relaxation Road Trip. Romantic Evening Sex All Themes. Kristine Meredith Flaherty born June 30, , better known as K.
Flay, is an American singer, songwriter, rapper, and musician. She started making music as the result of a conversation with her friend about the simplicity of modern rap. Convinced she could create something similar, she starting writing songs and released her debut mixtape in After writing and performing the song, Flaherty realized that she enjoyed writing and recording music.
She continued to experiment with music by writing songs and performing and recording them on her computer. She released a mixtape called Suburban Rap Queen in , which she produced on her laptop, and began performing. In , K. She parted ways with RCA Records in because of differences of opinion. According to our records, K. As of June , K. In late April , K. Flay announced the release of her album Life as a Dog, by offering fans the ability to pre-order via PledgeMusic, reaching percent of her initial goal.
Ranked on the list of most popular Pop Singer. It really becomes a question of what matters most to me and what I want to put on everybody's plate at this time, and how much time I have to do it. I'm also in the process of, while doing these things, developing other things.
Developing shows and developing a symphony that I'm premiering at Carnegie Hall in May of next year that's called American Symphony. It will be my largest work to date. It's a minute, four-movement symphony, and it has not only the orchestra, but a choir and marching band and guest musicians.
It's a very expansive work. I've got to mention Soul , because I really got the impression that It wasn't a writer's room guessing what that world is like. It seemed like jazz musicians were deeply involved with the film.
Oh, absolutely. You've got one of the greatest living jazz musicians being a consultant on the film— Herbie Hancock —a consultation that was from the beginning of the film.
And you have Terri Lyne Carrington , one of the greatest musicians living, who also consulted on the film. I consulted on the film as well as working on the score with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
You have real jazz musicians at the helm of this thing. Roy Haynes played the drums with me on the score. I put together another multigenerational band there with real jazz musicians. Roy Haynes and Harvey Mason, Sr. Then, you have Linda Oh and Tia Fuller on the bass and saxophone, respectively. I think it's really amazing when they have these opportunities—for whatever it is—to have a big studio use their megaphone to speak to something that is more countercultural and less mainstream.
This is a great example of the power of a big studio—one of the biggest studios in the world, Disney-Pixar—to use their megaphone and speak to something. It can have a lasting impact. Anyone who says otherwise, I think, missed the big picture. I think it's hard to look at that and not see it as a win for jazz and for culture. In particular, when I'm thinking about culture, I'm thinking about the ways that American identity and Black culture have been at odds in cinema.
This movie was allowed to come through the cracks of a very marginalized history, when it comes to jazz in film. As a journalist, I have to reckon with the word "jazz" and the periodic need to obliterate it. Do you even consider genre when you write? I don't even think genre exists. I think it's a construct. The construct of genre was really created in order to help sell and organize music and to train the public to think about music in that way, in order to market it easier.
I think that's what it was from the beginning, and then, even earlier than our modern era of genre organization, what it was was all those things and race, which created these different forms of segregation.
Segregated radio stations even had colored records versus non-colored records, and all kinds of crazy shenanigans. People would have songs that were done, and there would be a white version and a Black version.
As you know, the history of all the stuff we've dealt with. You have Chuck Berry and Little Richard , and then you have Elvis and the Stones , and all these different blues musicians. It's very interesting to see the evolution of that. That's a whole other story. But it's always been a construct. We've just always accepted it. And I think the more that we look at the way things have unfolded with streaming in the early s, we see how the genie popped out of the bottle when people started to pirate, stream and download music and curate it for themselves, even though that's not even what it was called back then.
Self-curation and the free exchange of information and content creates a lack of genre adherence. It changes the taste of what they want from artists. We're just [now] starting to see the impact of that as the generation who grew up with streaming. You know, my generation was the last generation in that when we were 11 and 12 years old, we didn't have it. By the time we were 13 and 14, it was taken over. It's the generation after us that grew up where that was the only thing they had.
That's how they understood music consumption. There are pros and cons to it all, but it definitely was part of what is more and more exposed about genre, which is rooted in marketing and race. What's totally interesting is that the more time that the construct of genre has persisted, it's created different approaches to these genres that are identifiable. You have artists that have created music to fit into a system that is a construct. And even with that being the case, the music is still not able to be separated.
I'll give you the perfect example. If you listen to what's known as smooth jazz and then listen to something from the '70s, like Grover Washington or Stanley Turrentine or post-bop music like Horace Silver or Bobby Timmons or something like that, the only thing that separates that music—besides the actual musicians—stylistically is the production concept. Some beats, where you hear something Art Blakey might play, that could be a hip-hop beat if it was an or it was sampled. It could be jazz—vice versa—if it was played on two-inch tape and recorded at Van Gelder Studios.
A lot of stuff that separates genre now is largely sonic production approaches. I feel like that's the new innovation in music. I see a lot of people trying to break genres in how they blend sonic and production approaches.
What's the greatest opening track on a debut album? Guns N' Roses ' "Welcome to the Jungle"? Whatever's your favorite, chances are it's the sound of a young, hungry artist with a chip on their shoulder and something to prove—not to mention full of jitters about being in a studio. For better or worse, that's exactly what Wolf Alice sounded like on their debut album, My Love is Cool —and they readily admit it.
From an adjacent Zoom square, lead vocalist and guitarist Ellie Rowsell echoes his statement. Throughout the interview, Amey and Rowsell speak with a sense of awe about the mechanics of music-making, from nicking a Sufjan Stevens guitar sound to paying homage to the Roches' "Hammond Song" to drifting along on an Arthur-Russell-style drum loop.
Is there a release show of any type? Or are you still doing the virtual thing a year and a half into this situation? Amey: In the U. I actually went to one last Friday.
It was cool to hear live music, but it was sort of strange. It was a bit like an examination hall layout in terms of tables and a rock band playing. Rowsell: God, I feel like it's probably easier for someone else to hear it rather than us.
We've been, obviously, fully immersed in being us as a band. But I think we've gotten better, for sure. As musicians, we're 10 times better than we were when we started off. For Theo, Joel and I, we were very new to our instruments, weren't we? How would you describe yourselves at the beginning—perhaps from the standpoint of your limitations? Amey: I think we've always been in our own world—ambitious, considering what we can do.
Maybe when we started—I don't know if "ideas bigger than our stations" is the right phrase—but we've always thought of the little details, I think. My Love is Cool was done in four weeks, and it's a mixture of nerves, anticipation, excitement, and rage kind of blurring into one project.
Then, Visions of a Life —actually, our guitarist, Joff, said something that was kind of interesting: It's quite experimental by our standards.
We went on loads of different tangents and we were encouraged to have a real adventure in the studio by Justin [Meldal-Johnsen], our producer, who was super encouraging about going down the rabbit hole of loads of ideas.
I feel like there's a lot of each person's personality in Blue Weekend. We've kind of distilled it down to what we appreciate from songwriting and being in the studio. It's more focused. On the topic of anticipation and nerves, I think of the Beatles or Joy Division on their debut singles. They sound jittery like they can't believe they're in the studio.
Amey: Yeah, it's like a toy shop for people, isn't it? When you're a garage band at home, you have vague ideas of reverbs and things like that. It was really fun to explore those things with people who actually know what they're doing. Which wells were you drawing from for Blue Weekend?
Who—or what—were your inspirations, or archetypes in rock history? Rowsell: [Long ponder. They're a perfect marriage of the two genres, and that's inspiring to me, I think, in the same way that the Band are to us.
Yeah, lots of stuff. All over stuff. I don't feel like there's one thing that's overarching. It's here and there. We take inspiration from multiple different artists. What are some of your favorite moments on Blue Weekend? Let's start with "The Beach. Rowsell: Well, I love call-and-response.
When I listen back to that bit of the song, I imagine hundreds of people chanting it. I think we tried to make it sound a bit like that as well. It was always kind of funny! I'm proud of us that we were like, "Yeah, let's make it sound like hundreds of people are chanting this thing! Amey: I think it's one of the few songs we have where all four of us recorded vocals. Amey: I think "Delicious Things" was a bit of a breakthrough moment for us when recording. We started working with a revered producer, Markus [Dravs].
We didn't do too much hanging out and drinking together. Your first relationship is making something off the bat and hitting "record. We got to a stage where we listened back to what we were recording, listened to "Delicious Things" and said, "Maybe we're holding back a bit?
I think there was something in the four of us we weren't quite doing up until that point. From then on, we had a new confidence to write the songs in a maximalist way if we wanted to. Not having to strip every song back to, like, four people, which we maybe tried to do at one point. We had a demo version, which was soft and slightly electronic, and we had a full-band version. I think Markus at one point said, "It sounds like Las Vegas," which we weren't really happy about!
We got into the studio, split between these two versions. Sometimes, you can only really get the good ideas to come out when you're not supposed to be in the studio. There was one night when we were supposed to be going home since it was late in the evening.
I was talking to Iain [Berryman], the engineer, saying, "Please, can we just throw a few things at it? It's not going to be serious. It's just jokes. From then on, we kind of thought, "OK, this is starting to take on its own identity. We programmed stuff into it.
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