Atlanta Soundtrack: Curtis Harding, Taylor Alxndr and vintage Janelle Monáe

Taylor Alxndr: “Big City” (featuring Breathers)

DIY musician, drag performer, multi-media artist and community organizer Taylor Alxndr (they/she) released “Big City” ahead of the debut of their sophomore album, 1993, available on March 11.

Born and raised in Griffin, Alxndr grew up on a farm, moved to Atlanta in 2011 to attend Georgia State University and began performing drag shows at Mary’s in East Atlanta. In 2014, they co-founded and currently serve as executive director for Southern Fried Queer Pride (SFQP), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower Southern queer and trans people of color through the arts. 

In 2018, they organized the “Red Bull Music: ATL Is Burning Ball,” a dance party and ball (the title of the event references Paris is Burning), an event attended by at least 1,600 people that landed a feature piece in Vogue magazine.

With some impressive drone footage of Alxndr on top of one of the tall buildings of downtown Atlanta, Alxndr shouts their anthem (literally) from the rooftops. It’s as if they’re rising out of the anxiety and loneliness of the pandemic like the phoenix emblem of Atlanta itself: “I know I’m gonna run this town — if I make it out alive.”

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Curtis Harding: “I Won’t Let You Down”

This song appears on Curtis Harding’s November-release album, If Words Were Flowers, which he wrote over the course of the pandemic. The record title came from his mother’s expression when he was growing up — “Give me my flowers while I’m still here.” It’s a classic entry into the library of “slop ‘n’ soul,” a term he said he created as a play on the Parliament/Funkadelic album Cosmic Slop. 

In an interview with Nashville Public Radio, he said he “wanted to write something that if you were to listen to it, or if anybody were to listen to it and wasn’t able to articulate how they felt about somebody, then they would be able to play that song for their loved ones, friends or whoever.”

Harding, previously featured in Atlanta Soundtrack last June, is currently gearing up for a full international tour starting this month, with dates in Mexico and all over Europe until finally landing back in his home city with a quick gig on April 25 at Terminal West before hitting up the rest of the U.S.

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Janelle Monáe: “Tightrope”

It’s hard to believe it was over a decade ago that the video that launched sci-fi, smooth gliding queer icon Janelle Monáe into a stratosphere of stardom worthy of the science fiction settings where her videos often take place.

Our Vintage Track of the Week, “Tightrope,” is set in an asylum where dancing has been outlawed. Ever the rebel, clad in a tuxedo and an updo hairstyle she dubbed “The Monáe” (which drew inspiration from the classic pompadour), it’s easy to tell from the song and the video that as a kid Monae adored (and even wrote starting at the age of 12) musical theater.

It’s almost more creativity than you can take per soundbite, as she sings, “I tip on alligators and little rattle snakers / But I’m another flavor, something like a Terminator.” But it’s also defiant and affirming, as the line that follows right after that riff is one about “some calling me a sinner, some calling me a winner, I’m calling you to dinner.” It’s just so damn fun. By the time the horns come in, the contract with the gods of fame was a done deal.

Janelle Monáe Robinson was born in 1985 in Kansas City. Her mom worked as a janitor, dad was a truck driver and stepfather was a postal worker. In her late teens/young adulthood, Monáe made her way to Atlanta, staying with roommates near University Center (Clark Atlanta, Spelman and Morehouse), playing open mics, and distributing her self-produced CDs. The legend goes that OutKast’s Big Boi heard her singing the Fugees’ “Killing Me Softly” at one of these local open-mic sessions.

Soon after, he asked her to contribute to OutKast’s Got Purp? Vol. II, in 2005, followed by contributions to OutKast’s movie soundtrack, Idlewild. No wonder, then, that Big Boi makes a delightful appearance in the dance-averse asylum of “Tightrope.” Sean Combs, aka Diddy, became aware of her talents through Big Boi, and in 2008 signed Monáe to his label, Bad Boy Records, releasing her first blockbuster hit albums, including The ArchAndroid and its follow-up, The Electric Lady.

Oh, and she has acted in acclaimed movies Moonlight and Hidden Figures.

As head of Wondaland Records, she’s one of the few Black women who have their own label. Wondaland Arts Society, Monáe’s creative headquarters in Atlanta, where the alliance of musicians, writers, actors and visual artists meet and create, was inspired by Paisley Park, Prince’s famous compound in Minneapolis. The Purple One was reportedly (yet unsurprisingly) a major fan.