824. K. Flay

I need noise! I need the buzz of a sub! I need the crack of a whip. I need blood in the cut.

She’s cool. She’s young. She’s edgy. She sounds like she is in the same sonic space as Billie Eilish & Lorde. Those two have found a broad wide audience and creative critical acclaim. Flay, not as much. Why is this? Hard to know but I think it just has to do with the snowball of popularity. If you get a pop culture buzz rolling, enough taste-makers and influencers, saying they like “X” artist the buzz ball gets rolling until their is an avalanche. Flay hasn’t experienced this yet but by the sound of her music it no doubt is coming. Just you said. Or not, hard to say as popularity is a fickle friend.

Born in 1985 in Illinois as Kristine Meredith Flaherty, home girl for it going on. She has described herself as a tomboy during childhood, preferring baggier clothing and rejecting “all things girly”. When she was 14 years old, Flaherty’s father—a guitarist who loved all musical genres—died. Many of her songs are a tribute to him. In 2003, she enrolled at Stanford University, pursuing a double major in psychology and sociology. According to Flaherty, many people she met during her time at Stanford influenced her musical style.