Cecile McLorin Salvant – Oh Snap

Cecile McLorin Salvant — Oh Snap

Cécile McLorin Salvant’s new album, Oh Snap, is due September 19, 2025, on Nonesuch Records. Oh Snap features 12 very personal songs by Salvant — plus a cover of a verse from the Commodores’ 1977 hit “Brick House” — mostly recorded outside of a traditional studio environment and showcasing her genre-spanning tastes and influences. The album features longtime collaborators Sullivan Fortner, Yasushi Nakamura, and Kyle Poole, as well as cameos from singers June McDoom and Kate Davis.

The MacArthur Fellow and three-time Grammy-winning singer and composer wrote these short, intimate songs as part of a creative quest: To place spontaneity and joy at the center of her writing process. She originally recorded them alone, at home, never intending for them to be released, using digital tools and effects that she had never played with before, like GarageBand, Logic, AutoTune, Midi plugins, drum loops, vocal effects, reverb, and filters. The songs reflect Salvant’s wide-ranging musical influences from her 1990s childhood in Miami — from boy bands to grunge to classical to folk — and include party tracks with beats, samba grooves, and quiet folk songs.

“I felt I had lost a connection to music because it was something that I felt I should do in a certain way and do well,” she says. “I thought, ‘How can I bring music back in close to me, intimately? … What would I build if I could just build it alone, based on who I am?’ I was thinking about how free and playful I am with drawing, which I have no training in, but which gives me so much joy … I thought, ‘How could I approach music this way? How could I use music as a way of journaling?'”

Format : Vinyl Record

1 Lp