As a part of our Nashville Artist of the Month program, we often ask the chosen artists to make us a playlist. We leave this up for interpretation—some artists give us playlists of their own music, some give us a playlist of references they used in the studio for their latest project, some give us songs they just happen to like at the moment of our asking. In Yola’s case, the playlist she made shows the interconnectedness of music across eras and genres. The playlist covers artists you would expect to see next to Yola’s name—Chaka Khan, Prince, Funkadelic—but it also bridges the gap from those artists to more recent ones like Childish Gambino and Lady Gaga. The result is a sonic journey through songs that are close to Yola’s heart.
“My main mission in music is to show how things are connected. This playlist is a little journey through playlists I’ve made for myself in the past and the aesthetic themes that kept coming back. When making this playlist, I realized that there were so many production and aesthetic similarities across genres and eras, and it’s that fluidity of genre and era that I’m always expressing. That’s the story I never get tired of telling,” she remarked.
Listen to Yola’s playlist below.
