Yola Combines Softness And Grit In Her Virtuosic View Of Americana
The black British singer grew up loving American country music. Now, she's living out her Americana dreams with her debut full-length, Walk Through Fire.
Yola Carter caught the music bug as a small child growing up in a tiny seaside town in southwest England. Browsing through her mother's varied record collection, she latched onto the 1974 Dolly Parton album Jolene. It never crossed the singer's mind that that wasn't what an aspiring, young singer who happened to be black and British was supposed to be listening to and learning from in the late 1980s.
"I didn't know that that was going to be such a problem until I started trying to actually do it," she remembers. "And then people were like 'OK, now this is weird, we always thought that you'd sing R&B,' and I'm like, 'Why? My voice doesn't sound like that at all.' "
