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Lalah Hathaway Can Sing Two Notes At Once!

Greetings from The Music Bowl! I'm The Wonderfish.

Lalah Hathaway is up for quite a number of Grammy awards this year with her new album, Honestly. The R&B vocalist is popping up more and more in our mainstream media. I do not profess to be a Hathaway expert by any means, but ever since I saw her sing with Snarky Puppy for their 2013 album, Family Dinner: Volume One, I've been following her career.  When we started this blog last year, I knew right away that I would want to post about Lalah Hathaway. I finally got around to watching Girls Trip and I caught a glimpse of her singing toward the end of the movie, so the time is now.

Do you know what? Lalah Hathaway can sing two notes at once. That's right, you read that correctly. When I saw her video with Snarky Puppy, I kept rewinding it because I thought my ears were deceiving me. How was this vocalist singing two notes at the same time? I must have listened to that part of the song 10 times in a row. I finally gave in and started researching the technique. Here is the video of that song, Something - if the suspense is too much for you to handle or if you think I'm flat out lying, jump ahead to the 6:00 mark and listen for yourself: 


See? Did you hear it?? She sounds like she's singing a chord! How is she doing that?

After a bit of exploring, I learned that she truly is singing more than one note. It's no trick. I was not hearing things and the things I was hearing were things I'd never heard before. It has something to do with her vocal cords and Hathaway says she's been able to sing two notes simultaneously since she was 12 or 13 years old. As you can see in the video, she is not flashy with this incredible talent. I'd argue that even the band didn't know she was going to sing a chord, and I think you would agree if you watch their reactions to her vocal technique.

Hathaway spoke about her abilities in a Grammy interview in the spring of 2017, so if you'd like to read that interview, just click here.  It's five years later and I still love watching this recording of Something. Thank you, Ms. Hathaway! Shark's in the water! See you next time.


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