FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

Best Vocalist: Kai Proved 2016 Belonged to Female Voices

Unlikely pop hits sung and propelled by women this year testify to how powerful EDM still is for launching stars.
Illustration by Leesh Adamerovich

To look back on this long year, we're paying tribute to some of the people who shaped the look, sound, and feeling of club culture in 2016. Today, Kai is THUMP's Best Vocalist.

As it happens, 2016 wasn't annus horribilis for everyone. After working as a singer and songwriter, earning some guest drops on cuts by Diplo, toplining for popstars, and releasing her own solo LP, Toronto-based Kai broke through to the mainstream this year as the featured artist on Flume's "Never Be Like You"—a future bass track where she sings of an internal struggle between self-confidence and self-doubt, new love and memories of an old romance.

Advertisement

Released in January, the track burned assiduously through clubland while accumulating a steady flow of streaming plays and topping the charts in Australia. Flume's album, Skin, dropped in June on Australian indie label Future Classic to wide critical acclaim, as its lead single continued to rise, reaching number 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 in August and being certified platinum for one million in sales, 55 million views on YouTube, and 250 plays on Spotify at the time of writing. MTV used the song in a high-profile TV ad for its fall programming. In November, the tune collected Australia's top music award, an ARIA for Best Pop Release, and earlier this month, "Never Be Like You" was nominated for a Best Dance Recording Grammy.

Kai's success was a prime example of how 2016 was the year of the EDM hit sung by female vocalists. "Never Be Like You" entered a tradition in electronic music of a female singer featuring on a male producer's record that goes back to the days of Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder. But it wasn't until the 90s when the formula became a launchpad for singers like Beth Orton, Lissie, and Jess Glynne who collaborated on dance tracks but sought careers outside of electronic music. Like her predecessors, singing on an electronic hit was a platform for Kai to wider stardom—and a testament to how powerful EDM (still) is, despite claims that the genre is "dead."

Everything You Need to Know About Post-EDM, Which Is a Thing Now

Advertisement

The record's origins are almost as unlikely as it becoming a hit. After working with Diplo on his "Revolution" and Jack Ü's "Mind" in 2014, Starkillers and Richard Beynon on progressive house track "Rampage" in 2013, and Adventure Club's "Need Your Heart" in 2012, Kai wasn't searching for more collaborations, according to Timothy Vigon of Kai's management, Magus Entertainment. "There were several approaches from great artists and producers, but by this point she was thinking about her solo record," Vigron noted. "Collaborations weren't a priority unless she felt like it shifted the needle." Flume, however, Vigon said, piqued everyone's interest.

Vigon describes the production process as exceptionally fluid. Flume sent Kai some music, she worked on lyrics and topline melodies in her Toronto studio, and the two eventually met in New York to "create that little bit of magic."

Kai (Photo by Maria Jose Govea @thesupermaniak/Wikimedia Commons)

"Kai's best songs are the ones where she works alone, locks into her own world, and just makes her own music without any distraction," Vigon explains. "After she finds the heart of an idea, she bounces it back and forth collaboratively with the artist or producer she's working with."

On "Never Be Like You," future bass hallmarks like synth swells and rhythmic syncopations from Flume act as a bed for Kai's pop coloratura. The resulting track, while palatable for pop audiences, sounded like little else in 2016—it is a relatively downtempo ride, at least compared to the EDM bangers of a few years ago, or the crazy trance rides of 15 years ago.

Advertisement

As future bass enjoyed its moment in the sun, another electronic track featuring a soprano vocalist rose to domination. "Closer," a collaboration between The Chainsmokers and New Jersey-born alt R&B artist Halsey, assumed the pole position on the US singles chart in August 2016 and stayed there for 12 weeks—longer than Drake's "One Dance."

Are The Chainsmokers Really "Just Frat Bro Dudes" in Disguise?

If Kai's "Never Be Like You" was birthed by passion, Halsey's "Closer" was borne of intention. Halsey entered 2016 with a strong hand. Her debut album, Badlands, had been released on Astralwerks the year before, and performed well commercially, despite a dearth of radio support for its singles like the Lido-produced "New Americana" and "Castle." That year, the New York Times published a profile on her, focusing on her identity as "biracial, bisexual and bipolar" artist attempting to translate her large online following to a wider audience.

Halsey's Badlands Tour was bookended by performances at Coachella and a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden, but her touring schedule meant time away from the studio. In a pop landscape where a year is an eternity, her label was keen to release something between album cycles that could potentially expand her fanbase.

"From the very beginning, we held back any collaborations," notes Jeremy Vuernick, A&R at Capitol Records and Astralwerks. "The next step for us [after Badlands] was something in the dance world. There were a few things on the table and this one felt in-line with who she is as an artist, as opposed to her coming in and singing love songs."

Advertisement

A meeting was arranged in May when Halsey and the Chainsmokers happened to be in Las Vegas at the same time—she for the Billboard Music Awards, they for their residency at Jewel nightclub. A week later, they met at a studio in Los Angeles and recorded "Closer" in a day. "Closer" tells the story of ego-bruising heartbreak and emo hookups over a hummable eighth-note chorus. Its simplicity struck a nerve. "It felt very natural," says notes Vuernick. "But I don't think any of us expected it to be as massive as it became."

So massive, in fact, that "Closer's" trajectory couldn't be halted by an awkward duet at the VMAs, in which Taggart's live vocals weren't quite a match for Halsey's. Nor was its success slowed by accusations that its melody too-closely resembled that of The Fray's 2005 song "Over My Head" (the band was later given songwriting credit and thus, a share of "Closer's" publishing royalties).

The Chainsmokers first rose to prominence in 2014, with the campy banger "Selfie," a tune that fated them to endlessly pose for Snapchats with fans and led to a widely derided performance on "American Idol." What the group has lacked in critical affection they have made up for in commercial appeal, largely through success on radio, an arena Halsey—despite her impressive streaming numbers and legion of fans on social media—was eager to break into herself. Thus, "Closer" became the rare collaboration where both parties were equal opportunity beneficiaries of each other's strengths.

Advertisement

There is a long tradition of female vocalists whose work on electronic music hits have propelled them to mainstream acclaim. Pop-folk singer Beth Orton's career was buoyed by her appearances on several Chemical Brothers records, including 1997's "Where Do I Begin," though she never made her own foray onto the dancefloor. A decade later, Morgan Page's "The Longest Road" introduced the world to singer/songwriter Lissie, who has since released four well-received country/rock solo albums. In 2014, Jess Glynne's voice hit the airwaves on Route 94's "My Love" and Clean Bandit's "Never Be" before she saturated radio and tv commercials on her own with the unabashedly pop "Hold My Hand."

Album cover of Halsey's Badlands (Photo via)

Still, the road between dance/pop hit and sustained solo career is littered with just as many struggles as it is with victories. Sia, pop's enigmatic chanteuse and go-to songwriter, languished in the years following her work as vocalist for electronic outfit Zero 7 before her song "Breathe Me," featured in the series finale of Six Feet Under, helped to fuel her later revival. British singer Foxes won a Grammy for her work on Zedd's "Clarity," but has since released two solo albums that have gone overlooked, if not ignored. And while Disclosure's debut album held open the door for Alunageorge, it never gave Eliza Doolittle much of a career boost. EDM in its many forms can provide a singer with an instant hit, but is not necessarily a platform for a sustaining career.

Advertisement

Kai, Halsey, and their respective squads know this, and that's why they're not resting on the past year's laurels. Signed to Warner Music in Canada, Kai is now working on her first LP, teasing sessions with Dave Sitek, Danny Boy Styles, and Stint. While her team is grateful that the record took Kai to perform in Europe and Australia, they're not using "Never Be Like You" as a blueprint going forward. "Her own music is a long way from her features, stepping away from the EDM world and much more into modern soul and quality left-of-center pop," says Vigon. "It's unlikely Kai will ever make another track that sounds like this one again," he adds. "Unless she happened to work with Flume."

EDM Doesn't Have a Women Problem, It Has a Straight White Guy Problem

Halsey is in the studio too, working on her sophomore LP, but the project is so under wraps her reps will only confirm that it's expected in 2017 and "it's amazing." If the success of "Closer" has changed anything for Halsey, it's the world around her. "After putting her in the spotlight as an artist with a 12-week number one, now everybody wants to work with her," says Vuernick. "But there hasn't been any change in who she is and how she carries on her business."

Ultimately, Vuernick says her work with the Chainsmokers opened some doors Halsey is fully prepared to walk through on her own. "Now the stage is set and radio knows her voice," he says. "She was always a star. She was always a number one artist. She just didn't have the number one record."

Kai's team is looking at life after "Never Be Like You" more philosophically. "There's no doubt that the whole journey, including getting to work with so many other great writers and producers on the wa,y has helped Kai to work out exactly what her own focus is," says Vigon. "That's what 2017 will be about."

What it seems 2017 won't be about for either artist is another spin on the dancefloor. But for those who revel in those fleeting moments of joy in dark loud spaces, that's OK too.

Zel McCarthy is THUMP's former editor-in-chief and a music journalist based in California. Follow him on Twitter