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Clairo | Zinnias
Atlanta’s wunderkind singer-songwriter Clairo, otherwise known as Claire Cottrill, has bestowed us with a new live extended play recorded at the famed Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village. The studio is the stuff of legend; originally commissioned by Jimi Hendrix, it has been used by Led Zeppelin, Stevie Wonder and David Bowie — and more recently Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga.
That Clairo is delivering these acoustic versions of songs from her critically acclaimed 2021 album Sling in such a hallowed New York City landmark adds a kind of poignancy to her lyrics, and their wistful, bittersweet longing for home: “I miss the Southern cosmos and the zinnias, oh, the zinnias / It comes to me in a dream / In the dead heat and the suffocating wet grip / That’s got a hold on my mama, it’s Marietta’s kiss.”
Still in her early 20s, with a soft but powerful voice and poetic and piercing verses, Clairo could have fit right in with the women songwriters of the 1970s Laurel Canyon scene. Hey, Clairo’s family dog is apparently named after Joni Mitchell, albeit with a different spelling (“Joanie”).
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Gringo Star | Hanging Around
Although garage outfit Gringo Star has certainly been busy for the last few years with gigs galore — they just came off of a hot set at the 2023 Shaky Knees Music Festival last month — it’s been a minute or two since we got some new music from the band. All that changed, however, on June 2, with the long-anticipated drop of their new album, On and On and Gone, a follow-up to 2019’s Controlled Burn.
The retro-sounding, cool-cat vibes of this track are something that Gringo Star has perfected – as you might guess, as a group whose name is a play on the Beatles’ Ringo. Led by Atlanta-born brothers Peter and Nicholas Furgiuele, the ’60s-inspired rockers will be playing a hometown show later this summer when they take the stage at Monday Night Brewing’s 12th Anniversary on August 5.
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Ghost Town DJs | ‘My Boo’
Good luck trying to find a more summer-y song and video than our Vintage Track of the Week, a 1996 smash single for the So So Def hip-hop group comprised of singer Virgo, producers Greg Street and Rodney Terry, and DJ Demp. It’s the hit that keeps on giving, getting revived every so often in the almost two decades since — notably in 2013 by way of Ciara’s “Body Smash” and then in 2016, thanks to the viral “Running Man Challenge.”
The durability of the hit owes in part to the artists assembled for Ghost Town DJs and the producers at the helm — including Lil Jon, in his first-ever project for So So Def. Lil Jon joined Rodney Terry to mix the record and, as recounted in a fanastic oral history piece from Spin Magazine, even gets naming credit for the song. The “Get Low” performer suggested a change from “I Wanna Be Your Lady” to the succinct and iconic “My Boo.” Listed as one of Pitchfork’s Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s, the catchy beat and the bubbly, giddy refrain are like an instant, auditory conjuring spell for tank tops, sunscreen, pool parties and barbecues — just in time for the July heat.
Check Out the ArtsATL Atlanta Soundtrack playlist on Spotify:
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