On many evenings in her family’s living room, she would sit by the stereo waiting for her song to come on, being extra careful to not catch the disc jockey’s commentary between tracks. The word she uses is meticulous: meticulous about the sequencing, about including only the best tracks, about pushing her taste to the next level. Each song she chose felt like it was hers, and in making these mix tapes, it could be.
These are some of the moments Smith captures in her forthcoming book, “Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop.” Due out April 19, the book is part memoir, part criticism and all history lesson about the ways Black women have influenced our musical canon. It’s born of Smith’s lifetime as a music fan and nearly three decades as a journalist, including stints as editor in chief of Vibe and Billboard magazines and now as host of the podcast “Black Girl Songbook.” Most of all, it’s a manifesto of Smith’s mission: “For Black women in music to receive the credit they are due,” she said.
In this spirit, we asked Smith to curate a playlist for Women’s History Month of Black women musicians that inspire and energize her.
As with those mix tapes she curated as a tween, she was meticulous about this one, she said. First, the sequencing is deliberate, though she stresses you can listen in whatever order serves you. And she wanted it to sound good “at both volumes”: “There’s no middle volume for me,” she said. “It’s either on low or it’s on extremely high.”
Smith also narrates the playlist with an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music and a through line of love for the Black women who shape it. In the metaphorical Black girl songbook that has been overlooked and underappreciated for decades, each of these songs would take up pages and pages, she said.
“I’m saying here: Listen to Black women,” Smith said. “That’s what the playlist is: Listen to Black women. They will tell you.”
Listen here and read along with her commentary, edited lightly for clarity, below.
“Fool for You” by Alice Smith
This is a song that was originally recorded by CeeLo Green with Melanie Fiona, who really makes the song. It won two Grammys in 2012. But then a couple of years later, Alice Smith, who’s an R&B soul-funk singer from D.C. and Georgia, remade the record. And to me, there’s something about that version. You know that thing where you’re ecstatic about a person, but you’re also kind of mad that you’re ecstatic about that person? It captures that. There’s such attention paid, you can tell, to the vocal arrangement, but you can also tell that she decided that part of the vocal arrangement is just to let herself go. That’s why I love the record.
“Hrs and Hrs” by Muni Long
The thing that I love about this record is the detail of the storytelling. There’s so much specificity in the song about what a love escape looks like and feels like; what the smells are, what the textures are. And there’s so much about wanting to give to your partner. She spent a lot of time as a songwriter behind the scenes and now Muni is out in front and on the mic. And thank goodness.
“Whatta Man” by Salt-N-Pepa, feat. En Vogue
This is one of the best rap/R&B mergers in history. It’s Salt-N-Pepa and En Vogue at the height of their powers, and it just reminds me that collaboration can be so inspiring. These two groups got together and really just worked together to make something amazing. Also, the way they talk about men in this record is very loving, but very much from a woman’s point of view. It captures the female gaze on a man, and I love that part of it.
“Yes We Can Can” by the Pointer Sisters
This is a foundational record in soul. For me, we’re at a time where things seem more unpredictable than usual. And especially if you’re part of a marginalized community, you are constantly being confronted with violence. This song is from a time in the early 1970s when things were feeling that way also. It inspires me to keep my head up, to quote Tupac. The idea of, “I know we can make it, I know darn well that we can work it out,” I need that energy in my life right now.
The Pointer Sisters are also from my hometown of Oakland, and the producer is from New Orleans, which is where my family is originally from. I feel like it brings all those sounds together, and there’s a big comfort in that for me. And comfort right now is at a premium in this world.
“Yu-Ma / Go Away Little Boy” by Marlena Shaw
I always try to include Marlena Shaw on almost any playlist because her voice is so perfect. She is so underrated. I’m a storyteller, so I love songs that tell a story, and this one tells the story of a woman who’s sad about the fact that her husband wants to try to make it on his own as an entrepreneur. That doesn’t sound very romantic, but if you listen to the song, it is. There’s this whole monologue at the beginning where she sets up this great vocal afterward, and there’s so much detail. There’s one line I remember hearing when I was a little girl. It was so wild to me that she said something like, “Please don’t kiss my earlobes like that.” And I remember thinking, “People are out here kissing earlobes?!”
“Guess Who I Saw Today” by Nancy Wilson
This track leans into the theme of perfect vocals and storytelling in the middle of the playlist. It’s a jazz standard that’s been sung by everybody and their mother in every decade of its existence, starting in the ’50s. The story never gets old: It’s about a woman singing to her lover about having been out on the town doing her errands. She talks about seeing this couple who was very much in love. At first, it seems like it’s a beautiful record about her just seeing a lovely couple. And I’m just going to give up the spoiler: Who she saw that day was her guy with his other lover.
It was one of my grandmother’s favorite records, so as a child hearing it, it taught me how to tell a story but to save something for impact. And Nancy Wilson does that not just with the lyrics, but with her voice. Her tone and her pacing is so disciplined, it’s almost religious: “I’m just telling you just the basic story, a nice story. But my heart is completely breaking.”
“Ain’t Nobody Like You” by Miki Howard
In the ’90s when there was so much competition between Toni Braxton, Mariah Carey, Destiny’s Child — everybody was making records — Miki Howard somehow slipped in there and made a name for herself. The chorus of this song is inspiring to me when I’m feeling down and like I can’t do my work the way I’d like to do it. In the chorus, she basically says: I’ve done everything! I’ve been around the world, I’ve dated all different types of guys, but I’m still here, and there’s nobody like you.
And something about her energy isn’t just about the feeling that she has or the person that she’s in love with. It’s very much saying: I am a full and whole person. Regardless of my circumstance, I am going to do me and be me. I love the record for that energy.
“Honey” by Erykah Badu
This is the same energy — the same spicy midtempo, the same female gaze. It’s so romantic when she says, “So tell me, Slim, what you wanna do?” It’s like, who’s calling a dude “Slim” like that?! Well, you know, it’s Badu! I aspire to the confidence of Badu in all things. Everything about her is inspiring to me.
“Higher Love” by Whitney Houston
I’m not out here making playlists without Whitney Houston. I don’t know what playlist I could make where I would say no, Whitney’s not appropriate. So for this one, I chose her version of Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love.” It showed up on a Japanese version of her third album, “I’m Your Baby Tonight.” Steve already sang it with a little bit of a gospel flair, but Whitney takes it all the way there. To me, it’s super interesting when she brings her gospel roots to pop records, and it’s inspiring for that reason. It’s also inspiring because it brings that fervor of joy, of faith and belief, regardless of what you believe in. It’s contagious.
“Diamonds” by Rihanna
There’s a lot of reasons my book is called “Shine Bright.” One is the old spiritual song “This Little Light of Mine,” a song that meant so much to me as a child and still does. And “Diamonds” by Rihanna is another. It’s such a great command to us from her. You want to think it’s an ask, but it’s not. She’s commanding us to shine bright.
