Yola - Symphony
Yola tells the story behind her song "Symphony."
Yola is a singer/songwriter and actress. She released her solo debut album in 2019, which was nominated for 4 Grammys, including Best New Artist and Best Americana Album, and Rolling Stone named it one of the best country albums of the year. But the thing is, Yola鈥檚 music career wasn鈥檛 new, and her background wasn鈥檛 in country music. She鈥檚 from Bristol in the UK, and starting back in the early 2000s, she was a vocalist recording tracks for DJs and electronic music producers. In January 2025, Yola put out an EP called My Way. And as you鈥檒l hear her explain in this episode, a lot of her new music is motivated by wanting to assert her identity beyond the Americana and country music boundaries. In addition to her music, she鈥檚 also acting 鈥 she played Sister Rosetta Tharpe in the 2022 film Elvis, and she starred on Broadway in the musical Hadestown. For this episode, I talked to Yola about her song 鈥淪ymphony,鈥 along with co-writer and co-producer Sean Douglas. Yola and Sean trace the journey of the song 鈥淪ymphony,鈥 and, along with it, Yola traces her own journey, too.
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