SUNDANCE: TWENTY FEET FROM STARDOM

When you sing in the shower, when tunes get stuck in your head, most of the time, it is the background vocal parts in a song that does it to you. Even though they are called “background” and the singers themselves go unsung, these voices sing the hooks and bring the color and richness to lyrical music. This undisputed phenomenon smacks you in the forehead in "Twenty Feet From Stardom," one of our favorite films, directed by Morgan Neville, premiering at the Sundance Festival 2013. This documentary gives us a close up view and listen as it explores the careers and lives of some of the greatest backup singers in history, including Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, Judith Hill, among others. With appearances by the lead singers they have backed up over the past 50 years of rock and roll and Motown music (including Mick Jagger, Elton John, Sting, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, and more) these womens’ voices are the kind of beautiful that makes you cry, especially when you hear them on their own. Why they never made it past twenty feet from stardom, into their own superstardom careers is a mystery and a shame.

We were treated to a private concert by Love, Clayton, Fischer, and Hill at the Sundance House where we got up close and personal, as seen in this photo. We didn’t want them to ever stop... even when they begged as after two hours of rapture, “Let us go now! We’re tired!!”