The deity feels quite a bit closer when Jade Bird listens to Aretha Franklin’s 1971 album Live at Fillmore West.
“I listened to that album in the car while on tour, and goose bumps were running up my arms,” says Bird, an English singer-songwriter whose 2021 album Different Kinds of Light was produced by critically acclaimed Nashville producer David Cobb. “I’ve never heard something so close to God.”
Bird, who was raised in England, Germany and Wales and recently moved from Austin to Los Angeles, believes Live at Fillmore West is one of the best albums she has ever heard. Two other albums reach that plateau, she tells me.
“Alanis Morrisette’s Jagged Little Pill speaks to women in a way that I have always longed to,” Bird says. “The lyrics are timeless. And, when I heard Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly on the train to school, it was the first time in my life I thought I was hearing a classic.”
Critics’ initial reviews of Bird’s music make me wonder whether a future classic could also come from Bird, who celebrated her 25th birthday in October. Allmusic.com writes that her songs on Different Kinds of Light are “engaging” and “played and captured with gusto.” Additionally, Bird’s self-titled 2019 debut album, according to allmusic.com, is “solid” and a “full of well-written songs and plenty of attitude that delivers on the promise of her early singles.”
“The second album is obviously more grown up,” Bird tells me about the album produced by Cobb, who has also produced Grammy-winning albums by Brandi Carlile, Chris Stapleton and Jason Isbell. “The first album is about doubting love when you don’t have that many good examples of it growing up. The second album is about letting a little bit of it in and the joy of meeting somebody who can change your mind.”
Allmusic.com categorizes Bird’s music as “a winsome mix of folk, pop and rustic Americana.” Does she agree?
“I’ve always adored songwriters of every decade, but the ’60s and the ’70s really got me at a young age,” she responds. “I moved around a lot as a kid and often related to the world of the ’70s folk wanderer singing about the experience of belonging nowhere and everywhere. I think categorizations are always limiting, but I’ve come to peace with whatever people want to call me musically.”
Bird plans to begin releasing new music next year and has recorded about half of a third album.
“It’s by far my most clear and vulnerable record,” she says. “I am beyond excited to perform my best material yet. The pieces are still coming together, but I can say that most or all of the material has been done in L.A. in true 70s fashion.”
Speaking of the 1970s, I ask Bird why she is a fan of a musical icon from that decade: Patti Smith.
“I most love her poetry,” she answers. “I was a kid in my room scrolling across the abyss that is YouTube — ha! I found an audio recording of a reading Patti did, and I remember almost going into a trance. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”
Bird has said in the past that she wants to be a role model in the feminist movement.
“I want to be somebody who young women can feel a comfort with through my music or otherwise,” she explains. “If a role model is a spokesperson for the removal of shame and guilt about something as basic as our bodies, count me in.”
One of Brandi Carlile’s aims in her Looking Out Foundation is gender equality and female empowerment, and she has been an inspiration for Bird. Bird says the best concert she ever attended was one performed by Carlile.
“Brandi Carlile has been so influential on me,” Bird says. “I remember her performing ‘A Case of You’ and thinking, wow, it doesn’t matter if you’re a woman, if you do or don’t fit in or what album you are on. You just have to be undeniably good, and you will be fine. It was like watching sheer dedication and talent in all its glory.”
Bird says she covers other artists’ songs during her shows, because “playing 12 original songs that people haven’t heard before is sometimes a lot to take in.” She has covered songs by Blondie and Johnny Cash, and she recently released a cover of Don McLean’s “American Pie” for the documentary The Day the Music Died.
“Singing any song that has already been taken into so many people’s lives is such an interesting experience,” Bird says. “You try to find new things in the song and want to show you appreciate it, but you are also trying to get under the skin of anything that has had such staying power.”
Bird says her favorite city to perform in is Manchester, England.
Locals there “really love and appreciate music, and every time I play there the audiences are on another level,” she says. “Most of my favorite bands are from there too, and music feels woven into the air.”