Vivian Green A Love Story
It's no suprise that Vivan Green, Columbia Records newest singer-songwriter, is such a musical power house. From her earliest memories, Vivian Green has been surrounded by music.
"my mother used to sing to me all the time- jazz, spirituals, everything, "Green, now 23, recalls while describing her childhood in Philly. "She even made up little songs to teach us things like our address, or how to spell our names. She even made the books of the Bible into a song. I still remember it."To prove her point, Green breaks into finger-snapping riff that lists all sixty-six books of the Bible"Genesis... Exodus...Leviticus..."- and ends with a giggle.
"In fact," she says, "my very first performance was singing that song. My mother dressed me up and put me on stage and I did a little dance at the church talent show." Vivian was five years old.
At eight, Vivian took up the piano. At eleven, she started writing songs. And at thirteen, Vivian Green became the fifth member of a girl group with the linuistically-inspired named Younique.
"We performed some of my earlymaterial," she says laughing. "and we were not very good. But we had fun."
At 15, Vivian started pursuing music seriuosly, sending out demos and writing songs for other artists.
But what Green spent most of her time doing was sining. Friday night, Saturday night, and many nights during the week, Green would put on a fancy dress and get up in front of an audiance of hundreds,sometimes thousands. Night after night she would dazzle them with the music she learned as a child. "I got to sing all the songs I heard from my mothergrowing up," she says. "The band leaders couldn't believe that at eighteen I knew "Bye, Bye Black Bird."
Gren got her first professional break at 17 writing music with Boyz 2 Men. When she was 19, before the beginning of her solo career, she did a short stint as a back-up singer for JillScott. By November 2001, she remebers, "the ink was dry [on my Colunbia contract]. It was like a dream come true."
"The album actually is a love story, "says Green. "I wear my heart on my sleeve." But don't expect the traditional boy-meets-girl plot line. Rather, the album is sophisticated, atuobiographical rumination on a relationship gone wrong, learning to love yourself, and then finding true love.
The infectious track, "Emotional Rollercoaster", written by Green while she was going through a rough time with her boygriend.
During the making of the album, Vivian wrote "Superwoman" one day while reminiscing about the old relationship. "He just wanted me to be something that I wasn't with these ridiculous requests and demands. One day I was like, "This is not me, Iam not superwoman!"
If you asked Green how long she labored over her debut project, her answer might surprise you. "I did a lot of songs from scratch," she says with a modest shrug. "I'd just go into the studio, like, 'What do we want to do today, something up-tempo?' And before the day was over we'd have a whole song. I like writing like that. I'm really fast."
She sings? She writes? She can put together a song in a single day? She sure sounds like superwoman to us.
Her debut album, A Love Story, is an inspired blend of new Phill soul coupled with the vocal maturity Greeen developed through years of performing in front of live audiences. And her self-penned lyrics reveal the emotional range of a young woman who's seen some of life's ups and downs.
