A big voice with a blue soul
Bishop Briggs played sad-girl anthems to empty rooms before touring with Coldplay and working with producer John Hill
To the outside observer, the rise of Bishop Briggs might seem impressively rapid.
Before the runaway success of the future-soul tempest “River” in 2015 — which was only the London-born, Los Angeles-based singer’s second single release that wormed its way insidiously into millions of ears and, to date, close to 35 million and 80 million plays on YouTube and Spotify, respectively, through lucky placement in an Acura commercial that no one remembers apart from the song — and the instant surge in profile that would follow, Briggs was slogging it out to empty, indifferent rooms for years just like any other struggling young artist.
This is why the big-voiced 25-year-old isn’t taking the hot-ticket status of the tour that lands her at a sold-out Danforth Music Hall on Tuesday for granted. Not everyone makes it this far. She knows she won the lottery to get here.
“I just feel so appreciative,” says Briggs from a tour bus parked outside a venue in Kansas City. “Before these last couple of years I was playing shows around L.A. for, like, five years every couple of nights and performing to six of my friends who I’d begged to come, with, y’know, a strange odour in the room. So to go from that to playing there in Toronto and having it be sold out, you have to understand, I truly, truly am so appreciative.
I’ve just been taking in every moment that I can and being full of gratitude.”
Being blessed with a monstrous voice and a knack for penning stirring sad-girl anthems that bring out the tormented teenage girl in everyone hasn’t hurt her career, of course.
Briggs, then still performing under her real name, Sarah Grace McLaughlin, was spotted by chance by a former Interscope A&R man while performing a thankless opening slot on someone else’s bill in L.A three years ago and finally given a chance to record. The first two songs to result from that meeting later that year via a deal swiftly inked with Island Records — and a name change to Bishop to avoid confusion with the “other” Sarah McLachlan, then to Bishop Briggs (after her parents’ hometown in Scotland, Bishopbriggs) to avoid further confusion with a metal band called Bishop — were the walloping Adele-gone-trap barnburner “Wild Horses” and “River,” so clearly the material was there from the get-go.
Once the voice and the tunes got out there for all to hear, it was hard to stop the train. A nine-date stint opening stadiums for Coldplay in North America ensued, she was all the buzz at South by Southwest in 2017 and since then she’s even got the call to make an appearance on American Idol.
There have been a number of “pinch me” moments for Bishop Briggs over the past couple of years, then, to say the least.
“Oh, it’s insane,” she says. “It can truly be anything, any part of this. Any time people sing my songs back to me, any time fans are waiting outside. I think my biggest goal with music is that people always feel less alone just by listening to it. Singing about any source of pain or any dark that’s in you it can be kind of liberating for others to hear.
“Even the people who I work with, like working recently with John Hill, who’s the producer behind a lot of Portugal the Man’s music, and being in a room with a producer who respects me and who I can collab- orate with — these are all things that I truly don’t take for granted and I realize how crazy they are.”
And now to complete the parade of “wows,” Briggs actually has an album out there.
The long wait ended on April 20 with the release of the rather excellent Church of Scars, a savvy blend of old-school soul and blues belting — Briggs is a huge admirer of Etta James, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin, in addition to her oft-professed fanhood of Alabama Shakes and Hozier — and high-tech production that takes its cues from hip-hop, dubstep and ’90s’ downtempo. She worked hard to keep it “raw,” she says, because “writing is an especially raw thing for me,” and one of the struggles that contributed to the long wait for Church of Scars was striking the right balance between the glint of modern technology and the unvarnished emotion of the music and lyrics.
“I’m a big poetry writer. I do love pen-to-paper, but depressing chords on the piano are always there shortly after,” she laughs. “I definitely never write songs from a happy place. It never starts off from a happy place or a happy chord …
“This album took two-and-ahalf years to make and I was writing so much during that time, so it took a lot to have to narrow it down. But I wanted to make sure that every song that was on this album really emphasized what has been happening this past couple of years. One of the last songs that was added is a song called ‘Water’ and it was produced by John Hill and it was written a month before the album was submitted, just a couple of months ago. So I felt so excited to have something that showed exactly what I’ve been writing right now, exactly what’s happening in my life, but also songs like ‘Wild Horses’ and ‘River,’ which are the reasons I can even make an album.” Much has been made in the press of how a pint-sized Briggs honed her vocal chops singing in karaoke bars after moving to Tokyo with her parents at four and then to Hong Kong at 10, but the myth is slightly over- stated. She might have been born with those pipes, but she had to learn to properly work ’em.
“I took singing lessons for eight years in Hong Kong with this teacher named Christine Sampson and every Saturday morning I was in there so I definitely, definitely had vocal training,” she says. “But karaoke is where I kind of caught that first bug of performing. That was where I first got really excited about singing and all of that. But as I got older, I definitely realized that the key to longevity is singing correctly and warming up and all these things. So I was really lucky that I got given singing lessons for a Christmas present from my mom.”
And did she have any particular tunes in her backpocket that she could completely nail every time?
“I couldn’t nail anything. I was terrible,” Briggs confesses. “But I did ‘The Greatest Love of All’ by Whitney Houston, I did ‘No Scrubs’ by TLC and, oh my god, anything by the Spice Girls because, I mean, it was the ’90s.”