Stay High – Brittany Howard

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“Everybody frowns and walks around/With that ugly thing on their face
And where I come from/We work hard and grind and hustle all day
There comes a time, there comes a time/At night, where we get to play
And we smile and laugh and jump and clap/And yell and holler and just feel great”

You don’t have to love Brittany Howard, but you HAVE to respect her. Her voice. Her lyrics. Her passionate stage performances. Her Biracial upbringing in racist Alabama, living in a literal junkyard with an older sister (Jaime, the source of her album’s title) who died as a child from an eye disease she also has (to a lesser extent obviously).

As lead singer of the Alabama Shakes, Brittany stands out as an anomaly in every way. Those anomalies are what makes her fascinating and on the forefront of the modern blues and southern rock scene, shoulder to shoulder with The Black Keys, Jack White, and Gary Clark Jr. Her debut album as a solo artist, Jaime, is deeply personal and explores a perspective not shared with her Alabama Shakes band-mates. Check out “Goat Head” for a sobering glimpse into growing up Biracial in the 19, not 18, 90’s (spoiler alert: racism still alive, they just be concealing it).

“Stay High” is our track of the month, as it perfectly embodies what this playlist is all about: working hard and playing harder, focusing on what matters, and realizing your 9 to 5 is a means to an end, not the end-all-be-all.

 Bonus: Check out the video for this song, featuring Terry Crews as a lip-syncing factory worker in a surreally vibe-acious small town. If it doesn’t bring a smile to your face, you’re doing it wrong.

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You can learn more about Brittany Howard here:

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About the Curator - Ben Young:

Ben Young lives a life of polarity. He has split his life between the coasts: half his life on the West (California) and half on the East (Georgia and Virginia). He has pursued careers in the art world (film school graduate) and the corporate world (executive with Fortune 500 companies). And he is Biracial, the personification of being two things at once.

Ben’s musical influences were formed by music loving parents, raised in a world of John Coltrane and John Lennon, James Taylor and James Ingram, Huey Lewis and the News and Prince and the Revolution. Saxophones, electric guitars, synthesizers, and breakbeats filled the air Ben breathed from birth. And being born one year after the birth of Hip Hop, Ben has been joined at the hip with the genre his entire life.