Before 'Hrs and Hrs,' Muni Long spent years and years working for others
This is part of a series of features from All Things Considered on first-time Grammy nominees, ahead of the February 5 awards. Read the profiles on Molly Tuttle and Omar Apollo.
To hear Muni Long tell it, the success of her hit single "Hrs & Hrs" owes much to a coincidence of timing – and one of mistaken identity on TikTok.
It's a love song – a celebration of a deep connection, like the one she shares with her husband. "Yours, mine, ours / I could do this for hours / Sit and talk to you for hours," she sings, detailing various intimacies of extended duration, chaste and carnal alike. And it arrived late in 2021, after a wave of pandemic restrictions had lifted and, she says, a lot of single people were openly acknowledging their isolation, and their desire for connection.
"The song came at a time where people really were not afraid to say, 'I want to be loved,'" she says.
Her friend, the musician and actor Bre-Z, was one of the people who connected with the song. Bre-Z and her now-wife, the makeup artist Chris Amore,
