Yet To Be

Album: You're The One (2023)
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Songfacts®:

  • This stomping track tells the story of a black woman and an Irish man, each running away from something and finding each other. It's also a cautious celebration of how this kind of happy ending is no longer as remarkable as it would have been until depressingly recently.

    "The story of a young Black girl leaving the South and meeting this young Irish boy who's just come over the ocean - it's just thinking about how we're fighting, still, for a lot of things that need to happen," Rhiannon Giddens told Apple Music. "But we've come a long way. It's just a moment of looking at the good parts, really, of the American story, which is people coming from different parts of the globe where their ancestors would've never met, and they meet on this land and they create a new generation. They create new music. They create new dance. They create, actually, what is the American experience."
  • Rhiannon Giddens wrote "Yet To Be" with Nashville songwriter Marcus Hummon (Rascal Flatts' "Bless The Broken Road," The Chicks' "Cowboy Take Me Away"). "We just clicked immediately," Giddens told Apple Music. "It was one of these songwriting sessions where you go into a room with a stranger and you come out with a song. He's written songs that were hits during the '90s, so we had this connection there."
  • The song is a duet between Giddens and Jason Isbell. They recorded their vocals separately.

    "I've never met Jason," Giddens told Uncut magazine. "We've communicated over Twitter mostly. But I have such respect for him as a musician, and I'd love the way he uses his platform, how much he has highlighted black women, the way he has talked about his addiction. He's a great example. For any singer songwriter who wanted to become big and famous, I would say ',Be like Jason.' And he's a great singer, so he killed it."
  • Giddens recorded "Yet To Be" for her third solo studio album, You're the One. The project is Giddens' first record composed entirely of original tracks, mixing elements plucked from traditional folk and modern pop.
  • Jack Splash produced You're The One. Based in California, Splash has won three Grammys: Best R&B Album for Jennifer Hudson's 2008 self-titled album, and Best R&B Song and Best Traditional R&B Performance for CeeLo Green's "Fool For You" (featuring Melanie Fiona).

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