LADY ANTEBELLUM

Lady Antebellum is an American country music group made up of vocalist Hillary Scott, Charles Kelley (vocals, guitar), and musician Dave Haywood.  Since its beginnings in 2006, Lady Antebellum has sold 18 million units, collected nine No. 1 singles on the country charts, and won seven Grammy awards. The rock-y, pop-y, soulful group’s country mix seems to have found an ecclectic sound that has audiences swooning.

After a two year hiatus as a group, they came back strong with newest album Heart Break—the multi-platinum selling band’s sixth release. “We couldn’t go away for almost two years and come back with another version of the same thing,” said Scott on their website. “We had to do something fresh and new.”  The site goes on to say that the trio had a hand in writing 11 of the 13 tracks on Heart Break, more than they’d ever written on a previous album, resulting in their most intimate and heartfelt work to date. “It’s really our story,” says Kelley. “Songs about our spouses and kids—they have a universal feel to them, but there’s a lot of our personal stories here.”

Anyone who’s had the opportunity to hear Scott’s heart-wrenching vocals, experience her voice’s melodic sync with Kelly’s, and feel the group’s electric presence in person can tell you–it’s worth every minute.  Observing the group’s excitement at its first ever performance at Colorado’s famed Red Rocks Ampitheater made the experience even that much more elevated, so to speak.

ESTELLE

Also at Red Rocks on a panel of judges for SeriesFest, we spoke with Grammy Award-winning Estelle, a singer, songwriter and producer from West London, England. No stranger to cultural fluidity, Estelle’s parents hailed from the respective British and French colonies of Senegal and Granada. Well-known for her hit single “American Boy” which featured Kanye West, she has collaborated with many artists, including John Legend, will.i.am, Chris Brown, Robin Thicke and De La Soul. Estelle  noted that multiculturalism means she has more than one home, “It means I’m well-traveled and I see the world from a unique perspective,” she shared. “It’s always quite shocking to me the way people relate to you versus how you relate to the world, and t’s almost a concerted effort to not snap at people because they have a perception of you based on their outlook on the world. That to me is like the two halves of it, you don’t have one home, you have many homes, you also have to deal with other people’s perspectives on who they think you are. It’s six in one, half a dozen in the other–it’s all good though.”  She’s looking forward to creating a legacy where people see her creating content–whether musically, on screen or otherwise–and making that known, rather than giving it to someone else to create.