She also had time to develop her own material further, and the resultant debut album Not Your Muse, out this week, plays out between mellow, bare-bones songs such as the calypso-infused Beloved and swelling Match of the Day montage belters like Stop This Flame. “And when we played our first gig I got such a good feeling.” Inspired by the Justin Bieber era of bedroom covers leading to instant stardom, she dropped videos of band rehearsals on to YouTube, which bagged her a manager and started her career. “I knew I wasn’t gonna get into uni,” she says. Forced to drop most of her subjects, she took up music as an extra A-level, and joined a local band which helped her to further overcome her shyness. The pair had been out of contact until she was 10, but a bout of lung cancer tragically cut short their rekindled relationship. Music, then, was a last resort Waite was determined to go to art school but struggled in college, impacted greatly by the death of her father when she was 16. It was only when a teacher overheard her singing and recommended her for a scholarship to a performing school that she had any formal training, but the strictness pushed her to rebel: “Introducing a work ethic into it put me off – I only ever wanted to sing recreationally.” “You would press a button and he would say catchphrases like: ‘I’m feeling good!’ And we pressed it so much it ran out of battery in about a week.” “I had a friend in primary school who had a James Brown talking robot,” she recalls, laughing. Talking to her, she seems an old soul beyond her years, and had an unconventional penchant for the oldies even in childhood. I’d almost be pitting myself against these singers from a different era to see if I could do some of the things they could do.” The result is pin-drop ballads such as Strange, sung with stirring vocals that defy her soft-spoken and quirky demeanour. She learned to sing by following along to artists such as Aretha Franklin, “because in my mind she was the best singer ever. But they play them anyway it’s really nice of them!”Īlthough her voice suggests it, she is not classically trained she was born in California but moved to Brighton with her mother as a child, often staying with grandparents growing up. When DJs play my songs on say, Radio 1, they stick out. “It’s a bit of an anomaly,” she says from her flat in north-west London, pondering why her music has been embraced by the mainstream – she won the rising star award at the Brits last year, whose previous winners include Adele and Sam Smith, and is generally anointed as a major new British talent. Recording under her first name, her work harks back to soul and jazz clubs with smoke low in the air, singing poignant tales of love and loss in a lilting, wistful voice that echoes Amy Winehouse’s tone, or even Sarah Vaughan’s. Enter the 26-year-old singer-songwriter Celeste Epiphany Waite. But with a relationship giving her fresh perspective for her debut album, she’s made up for lost timeĬritics may adore the new school of British jazz – acts such as Moses Boyd, Sons of Kemet and Nubya Garcia – but it can still be difficult for the genre to nab mainstream listeners. She was supposed to be the sound of 2020 until the pandemic stalled her progress. Her album Not Your Muse was released today (January 29, 2021) on Polydor. The American-born British singer’s 2019 single “Coco Blood” rendered tribute to her British-Jamaican heritage, and the music video for the song, directed by Akinola Davids, was filmed in Jamaica. Christine Ochefu ( The Guardian) highlights the career of soul, blues, and jazz singer and songwriter Celeste (Celeste Epiphany Waite).
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