Celeste

One Liner:  Great British power soul singing like a Winehouse or Adele

Wikipedia Genre:  British soul, alternative R&B, jazz, neo-soul

Home: Brighton, England (via California)

Poster Position: Second Quarter - Line 12
Weekend One Only.
Saturday.

Thoughts:  Fifteen seconds in, and I'm already naming Amy Winehouse.  But also, the top song (by a ton, by the way) is instantly familiar.  I played it for the wife and she agreed.  Looking it up, and it was sort of funny - it was apparently the go-to song for poignant moments in the streaming shows we have watched recently, with appearances in Ted Lasso, Nobody Wants This, Outer Banks, and two other shows I didn't watch.  This is "Strange," which is an excellent song, by the way.  235.9 million streams.

Like Winehouse mixed with the whispy-raspy thing of Macy Gray.  What I keep hearing in her other tunes is an angle that sounds like either she is trying to make a James Bond theme or she just wants to dance with somebody in a British club.  But if you like that sort of soulful, jazzy, storytelling chanteuse thing of Adele and Winehouse and Glynn and whatnot, then this is truly great.  Her voice is top tier.

Fascinatingly, she was actually born here.  Born in Culver City, California to an English mother and Jamaican father, but then she moved to Dagenham and then Brighton as a toddler.  She started writing music as a teenager and was uploading songs to the Internet with some success before she was discovered and became the generic power-voice on some hits from EDM guys like Avicii, Tieks, and Real Lies.  Lots of singles and remixes and whatnot, until her 2021 album Not Your Muse.  That disc has several of her top songs, and it all sounds pretty damn good.  The other biggest streamer from it is "Stop This Flame," with 95.9 million streams, which 

Shows that dance party side of her.  Makes me think of, maybe like Orbital?  Moby?  Like, a song from the soundtrack for that Leonardo Decaprio movie The Beach.  That is the vibe I get there.  Anyway, again, her voice is so good.  Fascinatingly, no other album.  She's gotten a lot of support in the UK - Elton John told people to watch out for her, Forbes UK 30-uinder-30 list, James Corden said he couldn't stop listening to her, BBC Radio has championed her and she won a BBC Music Award, and she also won a BRIT for Rising Star in 2020.  It very much feels like she was one who was poised for massive success (as predicted at the start of 2020 by publications such as Vogue, The Guardian, NME, GQ, The Independent, and Ticketmaster UK), and then the pandemic shut everything down and her momentum fizzled.

I think she sounds amazing.  Hard to fault any of these songs that I have been rotating through for a day and a half.  Feels like she ought to be huge.