Singers with Unique Voices: Holly Henry (The Unique Voices Club #19)

Every Friday, I write a post about singers with unique voices not commonly heard in mainstream music in an effort to educate emerging artists and music lovers and inspire them to embrace their own quirks. This week I'm writing on Holly Henry.

Nabbed this pic from Musictopsligo on Wix

Holly Henry is one of those artists from the early part of the 2010s that created a huge international fanbase through covering songs on her YouTube channel, although her last cover was one of Harry Styles two years ago. When she gave her own personal spark to Coldplay's "The Scientist" though, that was when people started to fall in love with her.

A comment under one of her videos compared her voice to sweet puppy kisses, and with the purity of her sound, I'm inclined to agree with that. Her voice has this haunting, almost youthful vibe to it, which adds to her boho garden fairy persona on Instagram. Even listening to her music while writing this, it's like a lullaby rocking me to sleep with her ethereal voice tickling my ears. Her two EPs and full-length album fall under the genre of indie folk, consisting mostly of acoustic guitar and other instruments like something that sounds like a harp and a piano. And it's this sort of instrumentation that allows her seemingly fragile but still emotionful voice to take center stage. Her acapella cover of the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)," recorded with three-part harmonies all done by her, remains her most popular YouTube cover to date. It resulted in a disco cover with DJ Pablo Anon that came out last year, and even if it seems like a detour from her past releases, her voice still lends itself to the song perfectly.

Holly Henry has another stage name persona, MOONEY, that has released a full album by the name of softer. These offerings fall into the same realm as her single "Groceries," the kind of pop stuff from a different time not the present, although the MOONEY songs are the kind I'd envision in an episode of Grey's Anatomy. They just sound very gothic artpop, and would work well with a very emotional scene or something scary like a sci-fi movie or American Horror Story (Holly looks like she'd make a good Harley Quinn for Halloween). I can't decide which of Holly's two musical worlds I like better, since her unique voice fits both like a glove. She hasn't released anything under MOONEY for about six years now, and just got back into releasing stuff under her own name. So we'll need to wait and see what she creates next!

As with all the artists I write about here, if you're wanting to create art but worry about whether your style or voice is going to be like, abandon all your insecurities and learn from all the singers with unique voices I've covered. I say this as a classically trained American who grew up on an alphabet soup of South African genres. What you think is your biggest weirdness can be your greatest gift, especially when it comes to art.

And that is all for this week on The Unique Voices Club! Friendly reminder to subscribe so that you can get my take on these artists directly to your mailbox, and if you sign up for my Patreon, you get to suggest artists to me to cover!

Stay educated,

Alexia