Desmond Myers
Praise for "Shadowdancer" (debut album):
“an exciting debut led by Desmond’s powerful voice” - Rolling Stone France (3 1/2 stars)
"a compelling journey for this debut project" - Wonderland
"The production itself is remarkably sparse, but when laced together with Myers' rich falsetto, becomes a self-guided, innovative R&B tapestry." - The Line of Best Fit
Desmond Myers is an American singer songwriter and multi instrumentalist. His music is bolstered by a smooth understated tenor voice and moody colorful arrangements with earnest lyrics. Whether behind a guitar or a synthesizer music is full of clever restraint and moodiness.
While growing up on a small farm in Statesville, North Carolina, Desmond began writing songs at a young age, becoming active in neighbouring Charlotte’s independent songwriter scene. Buoyed by this encouraging creative environment, a chance meeting at The Evening Muse, led him to spend his early adult years in Europe where he travelled and performed across the continent living in Munich, before settling in Paris and joining the French band Her on the road as a guitarist and keyboardist.
In 2020 he signed with French label LVCO Records and released the single "Playing with Fire" which received unexpected attention and has streamed over 3 million times on Spotify.
In October 2021 he released his debut album “Shadowdancer” followed by a European tour which included a sold out release show at the iconic venue La Maroquinerie.
On September 14th, 2023 Desmond will begin releasing the first singles for an upcoming project. The first single, "Take a Bow", serves as a compelling follow-up to his 2021 album "Shadowdancer.” Produced by Nashville-based talents Louis Johnson (LONAS, Mackenzie Porter) and Reed Beiren (GAYLE), "Take a Bow" centers around the theme of quitting. It’s an adieu to giving a f*** written by someone who clearly gives many.
“It’s alright / if tonight / you’re not selling out arenas no one’s calling you a genius /
Jesus Christ / is that what you require?”
The song builds from an a near acapella first verse, to a cascading grand piano chorus with thundering harmonies. The song speaks to shedding feelings of inadequacy and overthinking, and redefining success on one's own terms. Sonically the song draws inspiration from the grandeur of Queen, combining moody vocals, and gentle soaring pianos that climax into a bombastic chorus, followed by a Maye-esque guitar solo, the song is in a constant state of build with Desmond piling inner-dialogue on inner-dialogue letting all of his anxieties hang out while simultaneously answering each of them with worldly wisdom.
“After the last album, we had an incredible release with great reception and memorable shows. However, it quickly came to an end. The shows dried up, and I faced immense pressure to decide what to do next. Juggling fatherhood and my career, I felt a desperate need to find financial stability and build on our previous success. But with no income from my original music, I had to keep hustling, playing cover gigs and then playing overseas at considerable expense. Despite the progress, and the pressure I still was a complete nobody artist. It was an unsustainable situation.
I started to find joy in things beyond making music especially being with my family, and taking care of my physical health, I had always been very gung-ho about making music, I took it very seriously, and held on very tight to the idea that this was what I was going to dedicate my life to. For the first time I started to see that life could be so much more than that. I thought about quitting music for the first time. But ironically my first instinct was to write a song about that because that's how I express myself. It was such a funny feeling but it felt like the right thing to do. I sat down at the piano and "Take a Bow" came out in one session. All the lyrics and chords haven't changed since that first day. I instantly knew it was a powerful song, and when I would show it to people I got a lot of validation around that. It was like 'shit, now I should probably put this out' and just like that I was right back where I was trying to figure out how to release music again, but I think I learned a lot even just through this song. Music is much more about enjoying the process for me now. I used to stress about the numbers a lot, like we all do,, now I want to focus on keeping things sustainable and making music I’m proud of and have fun with the people I’m creating it with. It’s so much better that way.``
“Take a Bow” releases September 14th with an accompanying music video followed by a full band tour of the east coast.