Femme Files #1: Chlöe Bailey is A Rockstar
Megan shares how musical sensation and pop culture favourite, Chlöe Bailey’s expression has affected and inspired her as a Black woman.
Chlöe’s musicality and performance style has inspired and shifted me into focus.
In September, the algorithm blessed me with a YouTube clip of Chlöe Bailey joining H.E.R. on stage at the latter’s 2021 Lights On Festival in New York, USA, to perform Led Zeppelin’s Black Dog. Chlöe — one half of the critically acclaimed R&B duo Chlöe x Halle — had just released her first solo single, Have Mercy, and was garnering infamy as a solo act. Now, this was not my first encounter with the artist — I have always been a Chlöe x Halle fan — but by the end of this specific video, I was in awe of Chlöe in her singularity. This awe spurred me into research so I could encapsulate the rush I had just felt into writing.
Writing and research can often be a rabbit hole, and I fell deep into the controversy and conversation that this young woman — and more specifically her image — has cultivated. Soon enough, that was the shape that my article started to take: I wanted to defend Chlöe’s dignity and her right to her choice of expression, and shun everyone who thought they had a right to say otherwise, as though I were her white knight or something. But that, for me, became a part of the problem; it was this centredness with what she wore, how “sexually” she was either portraying herself or being perceived, that ended up undermining my entire article. I had fallen prey to the same narratives, even in my reaction to them, and it made me sick.
I deleted my draft and started again. I asked myself why I had set out to write about her in the first place. She is on people’s minds and lips for various reasons, sure, but why is she on mine? The reason she had fascinated me was an incredibly simple one: she was a rockstar, and I felt like I hadn’t witnessed one lately. Her prowess and stage presence confounded me completely. The confidence she brought to the stage was breathtaking. The ease with which she marched onto it was like a paradox. She interacted with hundreds of strangers like it was intrinsic to her nature. She owned the crowd with her high energy and moved with the music like she and the music were one entity. In an interview, Chlöe said, “My love life is music,” and it was crystal clear on that stage.
“...simple one: she was a rockstar.”
All that, and yet she was a guest of H.E.R.’s, and did not appear to try and usurp her spot at all. H.E.R. (one of my favourite artists) was fantastic and in control; Chlöe was only there for four minutes of the ride and did not take it for granted at all. They rocked out on that stage together, sharing a mic at one point and kneeling to the mercy of the music at another. Their choice of song struck me too: a rock classic might not be bizarre for H.E.R., who has proven that she can sing and play anything you throw at her with absolute mastery. Chlöe, on the other hand, has established her young career mostly in R&B, yet she has shown that when you put her in a box, she will break out of it. Her production skills alone on her version of Nina Simone’s Feeling Good are proof that she will not be held back by tradition. Which is what makes their performance so special. They each display a love of music — all music, and everything that music could be. In an interview for NPR, H.E.R. says of her decision to conceal her identity: “I just felt like everybody is really about lifestyle. And I really just wanted it to be about the music, you know, and get away from who is she with and the way that I'm living or, you know, whatever…” This sentiment is completely echoed in their song choice and is the reason I loved their performance. Black Dog is a song about a woman that is written from the male gaze — starting out lustfully and turning sexist when the presented relationship goes sour — but they make it their own and make it empowering and current and fun, from the call-and-response to the lyric change at the end. They showed us that the noise — the comments, the opinions, the debates — does not matter! Who wants noise when you could have music? That spirit was present in their performance and it was so utterly liberating to me!
The way Chlöe raised her arms before she left the stage, like it had been as good for her as it had been for the cheering audience, made me nostalgic for concerts to come back — after the pandemic, of course. It reminded me of seeing D’Banj perform in 2010 at my first concert, 020 Live! in Accra, and Ezra Collective in 2019 at the Roundhouse in London. It is a quality that oozes from them when they stand there, giving off a heat that cannot really be described and must only be beheld. You can feel it when you stare; you know it when it hits you. Music has always had this way of making me feel alive. Very few of life’s simple pleasures compare to the wonderfulness of words put to a melody. And experiencing a great artist live illuminates the music in a way that our speakers cannot. When she got on the stage, it changed and it had changed for good. H.E.R. sings, “Chlöe, girl, you’re a star”, which sealed it. It is clear that we have a star on our hands, and I am so looking forward to seeing her live one day.
“ Can we please bring it back to the music? Can we bring it back to the power of music? ”
It is not that I do not know why Chlöe’s budding solo career is becoming synonymous with judgement. It is that I do not care. The conversation around it is so loud that it is like a low-lying cloud hindering her and her career from view. Can we please bring it back to the music? Can we bring it back to the power of music? And not as a defence of any judgement, but as a return to focus? Chlöe only performed a cover in this video but the energy she brought to it showed that all she needed was the music, the mic, and the chance. That’s the Chlöe I’m following. The Chlöe that makes her own music, the Chlöe that performs like every day is her last. As someone who has lived all her life keeping her fire dim, seeing someone else fired up has inspired me to fan my own fire into flame.
credits
words — megan freeman
design — sâde popoola