Music
Kelly Rowland and the big-name artists who've emerged from the shadows
In Red Bull Music Studios Sessions, former Destiny's Child member Kelly Rowland talks about feeling second best. But she's not the only artist who's emerged from the shadows of a famous band member.
In a quiet moment during her recent Red Bull Music Studio Sessions, in which she worked on tracks for her velvet-smooth, old-school R 'n' B-infused new EP, Kelly Rowland made a confession. “The elephant in the room for me has always been being second best,” the former Destiny’s Child star admitted. “That’s actually the first time I said it out loud.”
On paper, this might sound strange: how can one of the most celebrated R 'n' B vocalists of a generation, with 30 million international album sales behind her, struggle with an inferiority complex? The answer, in a word, is Beyoncé.
Watch Red Bull Music Studios Sessions: The Kelly Rowland Edition.
14 min
The making of Kelly Rowland tracks
See tracks being created from scratch as a team of songwriters and producers work with singer Kelly Rowland.
Rowland was an integral part of Destiny’s Child’s ascent to the peak of late '90s pop, ratcheting up 60 million record sales worldwide and helping move the needle on feminism with fiery odes to female independence and empowerment, like Survivor. However, Bey was the group’s leader and born-superstar, going on to unprecedented solo success after the trio went on hiatus in 2001. Despite having her own massive hits, such as Dilemma and Stole, as well as four acclaimed solo albums, even a star as bright as Rowland would feel eclipsed.
Rowland isn’t alone. Music history is full of artists who’ve battled hard to step out of the shadows of spotlight-grabbing frontmen and women, and create culture-defining music of their own along the way.
Kelly Rowland
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Examples of now-stellar artists who began as second fiddles before rising fast to forge their own legacies aren’t hard to find: Kanye West began as a beat-maker for Jay Z, but would eventually end up on an even keel with his one-time hero, peaking with the pair’s 2011 collaborative album Watch The Throne.
Indie art-pop innovator St Vincent – who it might seem has always been doing her own thing – was actually a part of folk heartbreaker Sufjan Steven’s backing band before branching out on her own, an experience that she’s referred to as “like an apprenticeship.”
Even Johnny Marr, The Smiths guitarist (and onetime member of The Cribs and Modest Mouse), left it late to start his own solo enterprise. His first LP Boomslang, with backing band The Healers, arrived in 2003, with another decade wait until his first solo album proper. Call The Comet, his latest release, peaked in the UK charts at number seven: not bad for a songwriter who once thought he was destined to forever be a footnote in the life and times of Smiths singer Morrissey (who, incidentally, can barely get his albums into record shops in 2019).
The common thread running through many of these artists' careers, including Rowland's, is that they found their own voice, in their own unique way.
Take Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. For the longest time, he was the floppy fringed foil to Thom Yorke, providing Telecaster jangle backdrops for the latter’s haunting, slurred vocals in Radiohead. In 2019, he’s an unlikely Hollywood star, one of the most sought-after composers for film directors looking to underline a drama with tense, boundary-pushing strings and sumptuous piano melodies. His score to Paul Thomas Anderson’s fashion-themed period piece Phantom Thread earned Greenwood an Oscar nomination in 2018, after similarly astounding contributions to films like There Will Be Blood and Lynne Ramsey’s You Were Never Really Here.
Sometimes, after finally discovering what their own USP is, these artists’ influence can be so seismic that we forget they were ever second fiddle at all. Skepta, for instance, is now a grime institution in his own right as he releases his new (fifth) album Ignorance Is Bliss. Remember when he was briefly a supporting player to Wiley in Bow crew Roll Deep?
Skepta
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Like Bootsy Collins, who paid his dues in James Brown’s band and with Parliament-Funkadelic before gaining recognition as a solo act, the reward for finding the determination (and musical chops) to step out of the shadow of a more famous talisman can often be success so huge we actually need reminding of their roots. Case in point? Frank Ocean.
Ocean was once upon a time Odd Future’s silky voiced provider of vocal hooks – the melodic interlude between Tyler, The Creator’s gruff-voiced flows and that crew's general mischief. Now he’s a household name and among the most famous pop cultural products of our time, his fame transcending music into fashion and discussion of LGBTQ+ rights.
“What if the lyric was ‘I want to be seen?’ That would be so vulnerable?” Rowland suggested in her Red Bull Studio Sessions, while writing a chorus about a relationship in disarray. It’s a line that carries an added context for musicians like her: the quieter, less headline-grabbing talents who feel “second best”, but who want (and deserve) to be seen nonetheless.
On the mic: Kelly Rowland
© Keith Solomon / Red Bull Content Pool
