Music that Made Sharell Bryant
Sharell Bryant is a singer/songwriter based in NYC who ponders universal insecurities, fears and heartache with vital, pop-leaning originality. Sharell’s influences range from '90s classics from Aaliyah, Destiny’s Child, and Whitney Houston to deep folk cuts like Kimya Dawson.
In this blog series, we post playlists co-curated by Keepsake House artists that include their greatest influences, childhood favorites, and even guilty pleasures… the Music that Made them.
Indie-folk songwriter originally from Philadelphia and now in NYC, Sharell Bryant made her Keepsake House debut this month at Sankofa. The show featured both original stories and songs as well as covers of legendary Black artists. Conversation focused around how to appreciate rather than appropriate Black works, and the Black music discussed crossed genres and decades. If you missed the show, you can still purchase a link to the video recording. In this blog and accompanying playlist, find out more about the Music that Made Sharell Bryant.
The playlist begins with classics from Sharell’s childhood, including late 1990s and early 2000s singles that were part of a golden era of Black women in pop-R&B. The first—Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody”—was one of the first songs Sharell covered when learning guitar, and—Sharell notes—“one of the least embarrassing.” She had forgotten how great Janet Jackson’s “Someone To Call My Lover” is until it came up on shuffle when Sharell was on a recent run, but it was clearly engrained because she still remembers every lyric. The song opens with the relaxing rhythms of acoustic guitar and raindrops that repeat and build into the perfect road trip song, something Sharell herself achieves in the her own song, "Out of Sight, In My Mind.”
Sade is the type of artist who demands attention, and she had all of it when Sharell overheard the song “No Ordinary Love” playing in public recently. Not many could follow it, except perhaps for Destiny’s Child. “Say My Name” still holds up because “a classic is a classic,” as Sharell says, and it pairs so perfectly with Sharell’s song “Say You’re Sorry.”
Sharell’s music is not always reflective of her diverse influences, but you can tell that she pays close attention to the artistry at work in these songs. “This probably has one of my favorite second verse performances of all time,” Sharell says about Whitney Houston’s “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay.” The verse tells the story of discovering your partner’s cheating, and the very specific lyrics—”54th Street” and “213 on your caller I.D.”—pair with Whitney’s powerful voice to create an impeccable performance. I purposefully sequenced this song after Sharell’s song “Say You’re Sorry,” because even though they have completely different sounds, both songs address liars while still maintaining a sense of self-confidence. Plus, Whitney isn’t the only one who can write a killer second verse, as witnessed in the closing line of Sharell’s: “So while you figure it out / I'm left in the dark / Stuck holding onto threads while we're ripping apart.”
Highlights from Sankofa featuring Sharell alongside Moyana Olivia, Val Rigodon, and Valarie Walker. The show took place on August 17 but you can still watch it in its entirety by purchasing a ticket to the Youtube video recording here. Filmed by Justin Onne.
At Sankofa, we all joked about Boyz II Men being the only overlap between Sharell and Moyana’s playlists, but they didn’t choose the same song. Of course, the Philly native Sharell had to go with “Motownphilly.” It’s followed up by Usher’s “Burn,” another song Sharell used to cover and played in open mics at World Cafe Live when she was in college. The break-up song with elemental metaphors flows into Sharell’s single and the title of her 2021 EP, “Turn Me into a Diamond.” Mary J. Blige is next with “I’m Goin’ Down,” a vocal masterclass that Sharell practiced singing long before she started performing in public.
Then comes Kimya Dawson, who may have had the most direct influence on Sharell’s music of everyone listed here. “I loved her album ‘Hidden Vagenda’ in high school so much that I wrote my college application essay about it,” says Sharell about the artist known for her work on the “Juno” soundtrack. The song featured in this playlist, “Angels and Seagulls,” is the last on the “Hidden Vagenda” record, but Sharell covered a different Kimya Dawson song for Sankofa. Both “Angels and Seagulls” and Sharell’s song “Gold” sing around the idea of death, eternity, and freedom, and “Gold” features my favorite lyrics of Sharell’s in its outro: “I found a letter that I helped you write / 'Bout your drive from Grand Teton on the highway at night / To a summer ski town lit up by Christmas lights / You sat as I typed, it was the trip of a lifetime.”
Eternity continues with the final song of this playlist and an optimistic (sounding) spin on the passing of time, “As” by Stevie Wonder. There are of course so many Stevie songs that Sharell loves, but this is the one that is currently making her fall back in love with making music. If you’re like us and want to follow Sharell on her music making journey, you can do so here.
