Before he was in music, Bartees Strange was in politics. He worked in the Obama administration as the press secretary for the FCC, working on Net Neutrality, HIPAA and the Fight For Fifteen. Even for the last five years he has been doing environmental justice work in the deep south and east coast. “I wanted to be Remy Danton from ‘House of Cards,’” he says. But at a certain point he looked around and realized, “I really hated it. I hated myself. I hated who I was becoming. I didn’t want to be anyone that I was around. Nothing inspired me.” Even though he loved the work and believed in what he was doing.
So he moved to Brooklyn.
He had been making music the entire time. He was inspired by Midwest emo, Bon Iver, and a gigantic swath of genres and musicians, but he didn’t see a path in music at the time. His mother had been a professional musician. She was an opera singer, but she never pushed him because, he says, she probably knew how hard it was to make it. But once he moved to Brooklyn, “It was like, ‘Oh this is how you do it.’”
He says a lot of it was being around Black people. People in the LGBT community, or just Black people doing their thing. Musically, “Every year got a little more serious, for 12 years, and it all culminated in this fall.” This fall he released “Live Forever” an album that took the critical music world by storm. By year end it was on year end lists from Pitchfork, Fader, Rolling Stone, Vice, NPR Music, The Ringer, The New Yorker, and honestly, too many to just list off here. 2020 was Bartees’ year.
“People have said some insane shit to me about the record I put out,” he says. I asked for an example. “They have been like, ‘What’s it like to be a black man, making rock music, with hip-hip hooks and hip-hop drums?’ and I’m like, ‘I just listen to music.’” And Bartees does listen to a lot of music. The song he said he hasn’t been able to stop listening to is “Cocaine Country Dancing" by Paul Cauthen. “You can tell he listens to a lot of music.” Bartees tells me. And you can. I listened to this song and was grinning from ear to ear, then listened to the whole album, and got just as obsessed as Bartees. I suggest you do the same.