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\”Voulez-Vous Coucher Avec Moi\”: The Night Labelle Turned a French Whisper into America’s Hottest Record
“Voulez-Vous Coucher Avec Moi”: The Night Labelle Turned a French Whisper into America’s Hottest Record There is a moment in every great pop song when you can hear the exact second it becomes immortal. In Labelle’s “Lady Marmalade,” it arrives about forty seconds in, when the groove — all New Orleans funk and church-organ swagger…
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Patti LaBelle: The Fire and the Faith Behind the Voice
On stage, Patti LaBelle is a force of nature — the kicked-off shoes, the holy-roller rapture, the four-octave soprano that can shake a chandelier. Off stage, she is something rarer: a woman who has buried nearly everyone she grew up with, raised other people’s children as her own, cooked for kings of rock, and kept…
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Wear Something Silver: The Night Labelle Stormed the Metropolitan Opera House
On October 6, 1974, three Black women from Philadelphia walked into the most exclusive room in American music wearing silver spacesuits — and walked out having changed what that room was for. The Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, home of Caruso and Callas, had never hosted a rock concert. It had never hosted a…
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The Untold Story of Patti LaBelle: The Godmother of Soul Who Sang Through the Fire
They call her the Godmother of Soul, but the title hardly captures it. Patti LaBelle is a force of nature in heels — a four-octave dramatic soprano who kicks off her shoes mid-song, rolls across the stage in full holy-roller rapture, and turns “Over the Rainbow” into a ten-minute testifying workout complete with her signature…