You see the people grocery shopping, and they’re laughing. And if you notice, it’s from a child’s vantage point. Then I’m thinking, “Okay, how do I layer on what he was seeing as a child?” That’s why we start with the Apollo and the girls doing double dutch in Harlem. It’s really just watching as much of that archive - even stuff I knew I wouldn’t use. What are all the things about songwriting? What were the early days like? What do we have? And for Luther, they were the things that people don’t focus on so much: He’s a songwriter, he’s a composer, he’s a leader, he’s an artist. The first thing I do is I figure out themes. Because it’s even more important to try and get into their head and voice, and not have other people shape their story in a way that isn’t authentic. You know, there’s a different approach when the person isn’t here. How do you organize all those files to tell Luther’s story as seamlessly and personally as you do? But if we don’t have that repository, you don’t get to see the little gems because the only way you find those is tediously going through everything. She weeds out the obviously-not-good stuff. Our assistant editor is the person who watches every single second of everything. Everyone in our team is in different places, so it’s really important for us all to be able to access the information simultaneously. There’s a big team and everybody’s important. Well, we definitely put it on the Dropbox. When you have so much material, what do you with it? You had 80 hours of performance clips, 150 hours of archival footage, and 2,200 stills. Porter spoke to us about her process and how her team whittled down hours of material to create a loving portrait. It’s not actually the visuals.”īut once that groundwork is done, the final product sings. “Starting to break things down and organize them is the building block. “My process is to show, not tell - so I need a lot of material to show the things that I think are actually true,” Porter explains. Porter and her team sifted through hundreds of hours of video, and many gigs worth of documents, sketches, photos, and ephemera in Dropbox to get that effect, she says. It was how personal Porter’s storytelling was, as if Luther were guiding the entire process. What struck me the most weren’t the things about Luther that I didn’t know - like how he arranged David Bowie’s “Young Americans” album or that he self-funded his own career through jingles. For more, check out my Luther Spotify playlist.The Oscar Race Is Far from Over, as ‘The Zone of Interest’ Starts to Surge Those are the 5 Luther songs that come most immediately to mind, if I had to someday actually make a soundtrack of my life. This is one of my sister Petal’s favorites, and it never fails to remind me of her! This song definitely can pull at your heartstrings if you’re apart from your family and loved ones during the holidays. I know so many who don’t know the original and when they hear it, they’re AMAZED at what Luther did with it. His version of The Carpenters’ Superstar is so far removed from the original, that it’s become a definitive version in its own right. Luther had a gift for taking dry classics and injecting them with so much soul and emotion. One of Luther’s most beautiful and timeless, in my opinion.Ĥ – Superstar/ Until You Come Back to Me. There are so few songs that make me smile and bring a tear to my eye at the same time. Luther’s vocals are flawless, and this song STILL turns a party out to this day. It’s a song that brings unbridled joy to my heart. I love the absolute early Eightiesness of it. This video is one of my all time favorites. Dionne Warwick and a young Janet Jackson are visibly blown away as Luther displays the full glory of his vocal range. Please drink in the audience at this live performance at the NAACP Awards. Please share your top Luther favorites in the comments with me! After much consideration, here are my top 5 Luther Vandross songs. All I’m doing here is sharing my top favorite songs in terms of how they make me feel, how they’ve affected my life, and how they linger in my spirit. It’s incredibly difficult to choose 5 of the best Luther Vandross songs and claim it to be a definitive list. That’s how specific my Luther-triggered memories are. I was 12 years old at the wedding and I wore a raspberry colored off the shoulder dress. My big brother Clint chose it as his wedding song, his bride walked down the aisle to Here and Now. My parents would take a break from house cleaning to slow dance to their favorite songs. That was the album we cleaned the house to on Sundays. When I was little, we had The Best of Luther Vandross on vinyl and it stayed in regular rotation.
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