Julia Cannon: Why Not Support a Real One
"Instead of using AI to create black female musicians, why not support a real one?" Julia Cannon posted that this morning, and few artists have a better claim on the word real. Cannon writes her songs, produces them, and mixes them herself. The voice, the arrangements, the final call in the studio: all hers.
The route here was not a straight line. Cannon is Afro-Latina and Filipina, born and raised in Wasilla, Alaska, where she grew up as one of very few people of color in a mostly white, ultra-conservative town. She studied writing and production at Berklee College of Music, spent a year in Philadelphia, and then made Nashville home. Nashville is where she found her people. She is part of the Black Opry community, made her Newport Folk Festival debut with the Black Opry revue in July 2022, and earned a Rolling Stone nod for her "beautiful balladry" along the way. Her name sits on a plaque in the Black Opry's exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Folk and Americana are home base, but Cannon calls herself genre fluid and means it. Her records drift into R&B, soul, and jazz without ever sounding like tourism, and she credits a childhood diet of Ella Fitzgerald, Paul McCartney, and Stevie Wonder for the blend. The voice is the constant: honeyed and relaxed on the surface, carrying lyrics that are bittersweet, funny, and quietly unsparing underneath.
Her catalog rewards a wander. The 2021 EP Listening introduced the sound, "The Shore" became a Lightning 100 DJ pick on the strength of one perfect line about cold water and solid ground, and her most recent solo single, "i hate this fcking country," is exactly as polite as the title suggests. This year she co-wrote, produced, and sang on Ellisa Sun's "Dead Inside," a soul single about modern dating fatigue that shows what her production touch does for another singer's song. Better still, she has told followers that tracking is finished on songs for two new albums, with the first nearly ready for mastering.
Start here
- "The Shore," for the songwriting in its purest form
- "Dead Inside" with Ellisa Sun, for Cannon the producer and collaborator
- The Listening EP, for where the sound started
Listen
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