Not Tonight

Album: Perfectly Imperfect (2012)
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Songfacts®:

  • Both Elle Varner's parents are in the music industry. Her mother, singer Mikelyn Roderick was a backup vocalist for Barry White and her father Jimmy Varner is a songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist, who has collaborated with Kool & the Gang, and Will Downing. Its no surprise that Varner was singing as soon as she could speak, playing the flute at 6 and the piano at 9. The Los Angeles native earned a coveted spot in New York University's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, but her early success as a musician didn't make Varner any less shy when it came to a college crush. "It's one of the saddest songs on the album, about not being able to say 'hello' to a guy that I was in a class with for four months," she admitted to MTV News. "And to this day, I never said anything to him. And it was kinda heartbreaking, like, 'Just say it!' but I can't."

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