Tiana Major9 Debuts "Think About You" Lyric Video
Tiana Major9 knows that American audiences aren’t familiar with her yet — but this will soon change.
Last fall, the British singer lent her vocals to "Collide" in collaboration with Dreamville’s Earthgang, featured on the Queen & Slim soundtrack. For Tiana, the sultry duet brought new experiences like performing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Billboard’s 2019 Women In Music celebration, and the Soul Train Awards. “Collide” was also her first-time performing lyrics she did not write.
“It was really weird for me to want to sing somebody else’s song. I heard it and I really loved it,” Tiana tells Teen Vogue. But if not noted by the second half of her stage name, Tiana Major9 is a formally educated musician who takes her craft seriously and loves to write her own music. The Major9 tagged to her first name stands for favorite chord, a favorite among many jazz musicians.
Tiana gained comfort in performing through singing in the church and participating in praise and worship. Her musical inspiration arsenal is fully loaded with some of R&B and soul’s heavy hitters. She is also influenced by the artistic stylings of Lauryn Hill, D’Angelo, and Stevie Wonder. Tiana also draws from fellow U.K. vocalists like the late Amy Winehouse to inform her current sound. “I really love how she was jazz, but she was also U.K., but also very much she was her authentic herself in the way he wrote and the way she sang.”
Creating an American fanbase is one of many objectives the 24-year-old prepares to achieve in 2020 — as well as winning major awards. But being a young, Black woman creating music that does not echo popular sounds is a barrier Tiana is fully aware of, particularly when colorism is at play.
“I would say it is a lot harder for a darker (woman), like anywhere in life, and like anywhere in this world,” she admits. “It's a lot harder for a Black dark-skinned woman to make it in the mainstream and in the U.K, it takes a lot longer, especially one that makes the music the music that I make.”
Still, she rises as a success story from the U.K.’s underground music scene. Tiana’s growing success is not a phenomenon. The Motown-signed artist attended a performing arts school through adolescence studying musical theater, vocal training, and dance. “I've always known that I wanted to be a performer,” Tiana says.
With bright confidence and a positive spirit, Tiana believes she can handle the praise as well as the difficult side fame that comes with a widening audience. “I know myself, not to say everyone else doesn’t, but I'm really working on loving and knowing myself fully so that anybody’s words or anything that people sat to me that is negative would be like water off a duck’s back. It won’t affect me because they can be saying all of these things but that’s not facts. They can say what they want.”
The East-London bred artist has plans to expand her talents and aims to build a career with longevity. “In regards to music, I feel like with every album now I want to elevate and try something new. Production-wise, or songwriting wise, I kind of want to keep evolving my sound as I grow. I also want to get into video directing so I can direct my own videos, produce my own albums,” Tiana says.
Providing fans with an ethereal sonic experience, Tiana hopes listeners take away more than tender vocals. “I hope that they take away that you should love yourself, and never be an unrequited lover.”
Check out her new song and lyric video for "Think About You" below.
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Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue
