[I got the date right last year, but this year’s birthday tribute was two days late! She was born on the 23rd of January, 1999. I apologize for the error.—A.G.F., March 1, 2025]
In the late ‘70s, I overheard my social democrat Marxist roommate, while laying out[1] an issue of his new political journal, make it clear to a supporter who disagreed with an editorial decision: “This is my journal! Should I convert to Buddhism, this becomes a Buddhist journal!” I feel that way about this site.
My occasional posts about Wé Ani [way AH-nee], a wondrous musical performer, may seem out of place on this site, devoted as it is to theology, philosophy, and history. What her performances have meant to my soul[2], however, justifies my noticing her doings from time to time. Her 26th birthday is one of those times.
AnthonyGFlood.com will not become more of a Wé Ani fan platform than it currently is; it will serve as an outlet for the joy her music brings me. If I’ve lost some of you, I understand.
(In a hurry? Skip down to “Taste and See: Five Indispensable Wé Ani Performances.”)
Here are snippets of posts that capture my sentiments and may move you to read them in context. If they inspire you to check out her videos and ask, “Where has she been all my life?,” then they have served their purpose.
Wé Ani is her performances’ only common thread: each “theater” in 
her audiovisual multiplex[3] shows off a distinctive vocal texture into which no other intrudes and which often sets up an expectation that is (pleasantly) disappointed. Each performance also displays a unique dramatic persona. . . .
If you compare several bars from each of, say, seven (randomly chosen) tracks, then unless you already know who’s singing, you may reasonably doubt that the singer on the first track is the one on the second (or any other). And that’s because of the vocal color she chooses for any song she interprets.
Every great singer has variability in range and textural quality, but Frank Sinatra always sounds like Frank; Ella Fitzgerald, Ella; Stevie Wonder, Stevie. That’s what their fans expect. Not so with Wé, however: you may expect Aretha but get Nina; Etta but hear Whitney; and so forth.[4]
And from this day last year:
Wé’s polymorphic voice and musical choices take me back to the day, about sixty years ago when pop music entered my life, washing away life’s dirt as images of war, assassinations, and race riots washed across the TV screen.
For me, her performances are more than pleasant: they amount to a delivery system for aesthetic endorphins, an oasis and tonic for my soul.
But the above text is so much blather. Why not taste and see for yourself?[5]
I then offered a short menu for the curious, keeping the blather to a minimum:
I suggest starting with Feeling Good ([The Anthony Newley tune
mainly] associated with Nina Simone), the blind audition that got the four Voice coaches to turn their chairs. They were not expecting that [tiny] speaking voice.
Later that season, she belted covers of No More Drama (Mary J. Blige), Home (Stephanie Mills), Take Me to Church, Maybe (a duet with Lauren Diaz), Love on the Brain (Rihanna), and God Bless the Child, of which only the audio is available. In Ave Maria, her duet with Voice coach Alicia Keys, Wé exhibits the upper range of her singing, evidence of her classical training.
In The Voice‘s finale in 2016 (she came in third) her cover of Don’t Rain on My Parade sandblasted any memory I had of Barbra Streisand’s classic version.
Soon after that competition, she honored Gershwin Prize recipient Tony Bennett with a stunning ballad version of Steve Wonder’s For Once in My Life (which the Library of Congress audience rewarded with a standing ovation).
At home, she recorded the folk-pop hit Shallow. Again, the “look and feel” of each performance is different from that of every other.
Between The Voice and America Idol, she performed . . . Dream On (2017), Chandelier (2018), and, in 2019, Broken Wings, Never Enough , and two favorites of mine: Marvin’s Room Remix (her home studio) and Alessia Cara’s 7 Days.
In 2020, she gave us a version of Queen, Kanye West’s Heartless, and (another personal favorite) Amy Winehouse’s Stronger than Me.
Again, is that the same artist in each video? Yes, of course it is, but . . . .
A few weeks before, I had written in my retrospective on 2023:
. . . then there’s the uncanny sonic chasm between her childlike speaking pitch and her robust, gritty singing voice: she says she wants to be taken seriously, but “it’s not easy sounding like a 12-year-old at 23.”. . .
She’s also a modest and charming interviewee (sans tattoos, nose ring, acrylic claws, and other accouterments of female celebrityhood): consider one from 2018 and another from September [2023].[6]
Since her last birthday, Wé released three full-length videos: The Standard, Hardwood, and Passport (and short ones on TikTok, too numerous to list[7], but many of them delight me more).
For me, her stand-out performance of 2024 (with pianist Kofi B. and violinist Kersten Stevens) occurred on June 11th: her balladic rendition of Steve Wonder’s “Overjoyed” at the Spring fundraiser for the Apollo Theater’s 90th anniversary.[8]
Her winsome personality radiates humor, confidence, and humility; I could write at least three times as much about her. Oddly, though, after almost ten years as a performing arts professional, she remains a hidden gem, admired by thousands (but not yet millions) of connoisseurs of her self-produced YouTube oeuvres.
No label has yet signed her. I hope I live to see her success not just match but surpass that of her vocal idols, whose music she has studied.
Composing this was like rediscovering her. I look forward to her next steps as the first year of her second quarter-century begins. They cannot come too soon.
Taste and See: Five Indispensable Wé Ani Performances
Notes
[1] The old-fashioned way: on our dining room table.
[2] My soul is my life’s sensuous dimension, my capacity to enjoy and suffer. See Anthony Flood, “Nephesh in the Rest of the Hebrew Scriptures (2): Sellers on the Soul—Part VIII,” February 11, 2022, and “Psyche in Mark, Luke, John, and Acts: Sellers on the Soul—Part XI,” March 16, 2022.
[3] In the post from which this snippet has been snipped, I’ve conservatively listed 30 genres or subgenres that her performances can be sorted into.
[4] “Wé Ani: a protean multiplex of vocal performance,” June 11, 2024. Emphasis added.
[5] “Happy Birthday, Wé Ani, My Musical Tonic and Oasis,” January 23, 2024. [Slightly amended today.]
[6] “Retrospects and Prospects,” December 31, 2023.
[7] Oh, I can’t help it: Sway, Houdini, Flowers, Doja Cat (rap), It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (at last year’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in Philly.) I’ll stop . . . for now.
[8] All three are past Apollo Theater Amateur Night winners. Here’s the advertisement.