{"id":46652,"date":"2022-05-13T12:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-13T16:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/?p=46652"},"modified":"2022-05-13T17:42:14","modified_gmt":"2022-05-13T21:42:14","slug":"playing-seattle-brittany-danielle-hindsight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/playing-seattle-brittany-danielle-hindsight\/","title":{"rendered":"Seattle&#8217;s Brittany Danielle Lets It All Go on Latest Single &#8220;Hindsight&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"667\" src=\"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BrittanyDanielleCoatPhotobyJasmineNovak-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-46653\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BrittanyDanielleCoatPhotobyJasmineNovak-1.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BrittanyDanielleCoatPhotobyJasmineNovak-1-324x216.jpg 324w, https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BrittanyDanielleCoatPhotobyJasmineNovak-1-416x277.jpg 416w, https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BrittanyDanielleCoatPhotobyJasmineNovak-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BrittanyDanielleCoatPhotobyJasmineNovak-1-768x512.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><figcaption>Photo Credit: Jasmine Novak<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>For Washington State University music program graduate and lifelong piano player <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.brittanydanielleofficial.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Brittany Danielle<\/a>, music is not a new occupation. But after spending years as a student of the classical and jazz greats, she&#8217;s only just started to write, perform, and record music that is entirely her own. Today, Danielle releases &#8220;Hindsight,&#8221; one of the self-penned singles off her forthcoming debut LP, <em>Hindsight.<\/em> Recently, Brittany Danielle sat down with Audiofemme to discuss the heartfelt, piano-driven track, inspired by the pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests, and the personal struggles that she endured during quarantine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"300\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/1259503774&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true&amp;visual=true\"><\/iframe><div style=\"font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc;line-break: anywhere;word-break: normal;overflow: hidden;white-space: nowrap;text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif;font-weight: 100;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/brittanydaniellemusic\" <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Interview has been edited for length and clarity<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF:<\/strong><em><strong> Before I dive into this new single, I want to hear a bit about your background. Did you grow up in Seattle or did you move here?&nbsp;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. I was born in Bellingham and then I went to school in Eastern Washington at Washington State University (WSU).  Then, I decided to go to Seattle for bigger and better things.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF: <em>What<\/em><\/strong><em><strong> did you study at WSU?&nbsp;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> I started off with piano performance. I was homeschooled for high school and then I went to community college to get my 2-year degree and then I transferred to WSU. I did all my pre-reqs and stuff at the community college and then transferred to WA State and I did music.  There was an adjudicator that I had worked with through high school, Dr. Gerald Berthiaume, who taught at Washington State University and he recruited me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Halfway through I was like, I don&#8217;t want to do classical music anymore. What else is there? Have I wasted my whole life trying to do classical music? And another teacher, Horace Alexander Young, he started a jazz improv class and I just decided to do that and it changed my whole life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF:<\/strong><em><strong> How so?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> I was stuck in this classical bubble that was really hard. It was really hard on the artistic side of you because you&#8217;re not making something your own &#8211; [you&#8217;re playing] some dead guys&#8217; music and then getting judged for it. There are not a lot of women represented in that genre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF:<em> Yeah, there&#8217;s something about classical music and white male supremacy, isn&#8217;t there?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> 100%. I didn&#8217;t even know that Scott Joplin was Black for a long time. I studied his music and I had no idea. I was like what? How is this not an integral part of teaching this man&#8217;s music?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF: <\/strong><em><strong>Right! So what did you switch to<\/strong><\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> I switched to a Bachelor of Arts in Music with an emphasis in piano performance because I already had that going and also an emphasis in piano pedagogy and I got a minor in jazz. And I was so excited about that minor because I went to my counselor and I was like, what do we got, and she was like you have a minor in jazz and I was like way more excited about the minor in jazz than the major. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF:<\/strong><em><strong> Before college, what drew you to the piano?&nbsp;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> You know, I&#8217;ve been racking my brain to answer this question because someone else asked me this recently and I just don&#8217;t remember before. Like, I know that I started piano when I was about 7, and I know that I had a life from 0-7, and I remember things about my life during that time, but I also forget that there was no piano during that time. My mom just said that I was very adamant about it because my neighbor was moving and they couldn&#8217;t take their piano and I was like, &#8216;I want to learn how to play.&#8217;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF: <em>Are your parents musical?&nbsp;<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> My dad played blues guitar and I joke about this because my dad will listen to NPR in the car all the time and I was like, ugh, blues, NPR, bleh, this is so boring. And now I can&#8217;t get enough of it. I listen to &#8220;Sunday Side Up&#8221; and all that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wasn&#8217;t into blues or jazz at first because I though it was for old people but it was definitely an integral part of my musical upbringing.  I leaned a lot more towards the jazzy Beethoven pieces or like Joplin or Mary Lou Williams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF:<\/strong><em><strong> And your mom?&nbsp;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> She can sing. She won&#8217;t say she&#8217;s musical, but she has a good voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AD:<\/strong><em><strong> How did you become aware of piano-driven pop, which inspires your writing today? Are you a Billy Joel fan or did you listen to a lot of that kind of stuff?&nbsp;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> I was obsessed, and when I say obsessed I feel like that&#8217;s still too light of a word, with Ray Charles as a kid. I saw him on the Pepsi commercial and I was like who is that and how do I play like that?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF: <em>What was it that drew you to Ray Charles?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> He&#8217;s so cool. He had sunglasses. I didn&#8217;t know he was blind at the time. I just saw him wearing sunglasses and he&#8217;s just so chill at the piano and he just looks so comfortable versus how I had seen people play piano as uptight, stressed out classical performers. I was like, this is such a radical change to what I&#8217;m used to and I want to play like that guy.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF:<\/strong><em><strong> Obviously, as you mentioned finding our way from classical to jazz to your own music has been a journey. Are there any challenges that stick out to you along the way?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> There was definitely that change in college between classical and jazz, and trying to balance both. I found out there was a huge disconnect with both of those worlds.  It was political, like you&#8217;re on one side or the other and I was like, it&#8217;s all music. I need all of this to know how I&#8217;m going to regurgitate it through my lens later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF: <em>That reminds me, was songwriting a part of your musical background? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD: <\/strong>I had written in pieces. In a lot of the jazz classes that I took, we would write charts. So, I had learned how to write melodies and chords but then separately I would write lyrics to things that never met melodies. I kept them in separate notebooks in separate boxes. Completely separated. This album is what got me out of this period of disconnect, and a funk I was in after college.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF:<\/strong><em><strong> What instigated the funk?&nbsp;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> I was just angry. I was so pissed that I had spent all this time doing this thing I loved and I didn&#8217;t love it anymore. I was just enraged I spent all this time playing this classical crap and feeling like I was being judged for not playing some dead guy&#8217;s music properly, or putting too much of my interpretation on it.  But I loved this craft so much that it became a rebellious act to start playing again. My first couple songs were really angry. They weren&#8217;t very good but they were a start and they were angry just towards that institution.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF:<\/strong><em><strong> It&#8217;s cool that you&#8217;re exploring songwriting and trying to find your own voice brought you out of that moment of anger.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> It&#8217;s absolutely a therapeutic thing, playing music. I was like, a steaming kettle, aaaah, and then I felt better and I was back to playing piano every day and writing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF: <em>So, tell me about this song in particular, &#8220;Hindsight.&#8221; Can you remember the day you wrote it and what was happening for you?&nbsp;<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> It was during pandemic and it was also during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests. It was an interesting time, also as an artist who wasn&#8217;t playing music at all. I was noticing internal unrest around not being able to have access to the music community. I had started a Facebook group with other singer-songwriters and once a month we&#8217;d write a song together and perform it for each other and try to hold on to something. So that was a song that came out of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was really married to the piano line\u2014it was something I had doodled on the piano. But I couldn&#8217;t sing this song for a long time. I still cry. Halfway through I&#8217;d fall apart. It&#8217;s mostly about watching the world respond to a pandemic, watching the US respond to a pandemic, and being cooped up and having to face real problems because you&#8217;re not distracted with work and bills and all the other things that distract you from things that matter. I was also noticing the unrest inside of myself and [asking,] how do I move through this at all? So that&#8217;s where the &#8220;let it go&#8221; part comes in and like, how to process everything I guess.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF: <em>Is this an overarching theme for the album, too? What are some common themes on it?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> I think lyrically a lot of the feel is I&#8217;m an independent woman and you can&#8217;t control my decisions. There&#8217;s a song about a roommate that I had&#8230; It&#8217;s called &#8220;Validation,&#8221; so the lyric is &#8220;I dont need your validations and I don&#8217;t trust a word you&#8217;re saying.&#8221;  It&#8217;s between my battle with my own mental health and the decolonization of my religious upbringing. There&#8217;s also another one called &#8220;Rent&#8221; and it&#8217;s about negative thoughts living in my head rent-free and removing them and getting stronger and growing from that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF: <\/strong><em><strong>So you were raised Christian? When did you separate form the religion? <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> When I was about 9 my parents went a little bit crazy and we were only allowed to wear dresses &#8211; my sister and I were only allowed to wear dresses and when I was 13 I was like, look, if I get my own job, can I buy my own clothes? My dad was like, sure, whatever, and so that was kind of the start of my breaking away and finding an identity through how I presented myself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I bought myself a pair of Union Bay jeans and a maroon crop top t-shirt and I wore the crap out of that outfit.&nbsp;I would also go buy CDs. I bought the Titanic soundtrack, Jewel, Alanis Morrissette, Nine Inch Nails\u2014because I thought that was really rebellious\u2014and Nirvana. You know, a girl&#8217;s gotta do what a girl&#8217;s gotta do.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF: <em>Do you still have a relationship with your parents? Were they upset that you left the church?&nbsp;<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD: <\/strong>We didn&#8217;t really talk about it for a while. It was kind of an unspoken thing. I didn&#8217;t tell them until after they got their vaccines, when my mom and dad came over for Mother&#8217;s Day. It was the first time I had seen them in a while, I was six mimosas deep, and I was like, &#8220;Look, I don&#8217;t want to pretend this is a thing anymore. I don&#8217;t want to pray in my house, I don&#8217;t want to be polite about going to church services that I don&#8217;t want to go to because I don&#8217;t believe in it and I don&#8217;t want to continue participating in something that I don&#8217;t subscribe to and I will respect that you guys will still subscribe to it but I need you to respect that I don&#8217;t anymore.&#8221;  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF: <\/strong><em><strong>Wow, that must have taken a lot of strength to say.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD: <\/strong>Yeah. It was very hard. My dad said, okay. And my mom said, thanks for saying that, thanks for telling us, and then that was it. We didn&#8217;t talk about it anymore.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF:<\/strong><em><strong> That&#8217;s a pretty transformative moment being seen for who you are by your family.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> For sure. Yeah, it was huge, very huge. I think that comes out in &#8220;Hindsight.&#8221; There was all of that outside noise going on <em>and<\/em> internally I was like, oh, there&#8217;s a lot of stuff that I need to deal with. Now I&#8217;m here by myself with myself and now there&#8217;s a lot of things that I need to address.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF: <em>When does your LP come out?&nbsp;<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> My LP comes out on June 24th, and I&#8217;ll have a release show that night at Conor Byrne in Ballard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AF: <em>Are you still performing and teaching?&nbsp;<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BD:<\/strong> I&#8217;ve retired from teaching to pursue this Brittany Danielle project full-time. During that dark period I mentioned, I was teaching still but I wouldn&#8217;t play the piano. I think it was like that until I wrote these songs. I was was like, &#8220;Hey, you got stuff to say.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Follow Brittany Danielle on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/brittanydaniellemusic\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Instagram<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BrittanyDanielleOfficial\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Facebook<\/a> for ongoing updates.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For Washington State University music program graduate and lifelong piano player Brittany Danielle, music is not a new occupation. But after spending years as a student of the classical and jazz greats, she&#8217;s only just started to write, perform, and record music that is entirely her own. Today, Danielle releases &#8220;Hindsight,&#8221; one of the self-penned [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":46653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8233],"tags":[13095,2599],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/BrittanyDanielleCoatPhotobyJasmineNovak-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46652"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46652"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46668,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46652\/revisions\/46668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}