After a decade of dormancy, Chaka Khan blooms again

IF CHAKA KHAN

WERE a flower, she’d be a perennial.

“Because I go dormant and then I...” Khan stops and gracefully lifts her arms together, then slowly brings her hands apart, like a tulip emerging in spring.

“I’ve done it many, many times,” explained the singer, perhaps best known for her multi-million selling 1984 cover of Prince’s I Feel For You.

On the brink of her first new album in a decade, and, on New Year’s Day, serving as grand marshal at the Rose Parade, Chaka Khan is in bloom again.

After receiving the call from the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association, the term “grand marshal” had the 65-year-old Khan’s mind running wild.

“I’ll tell you what I visualised,” Khan recalled. “I imagined myself with a baton, marching in the front. ‘I’m leading the whole parade.’ That’s what I thought.”

Not even close. Instead, Khan will be seated on a comfy bench in the back seat of a classic convertible, which will slowly make its way past the thousands along the 5.5-mile parade route.

“This is all new for me,” Khan commented. “I love challenges. And I love new stuff.”

Khan will also open parade festivities with a performance. Khan said she would sing two songs: I Feel for You, as well as

Hello Happiness, the second single from the new album.

The new song is not a political statement – unless you want it to be. I think we need a shot of just not taking the little things so seriously,” Khan said of the Happiness lyrics.

“Little things are important. It’s about the little things, but just flow.”

The new album, expected by the end of 2019, is her first since the well-received 2007