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Maisy Kay Releases 'Beauty and the Beast' Cover Duet with CJ Emmons
By: Caryn Robbins Mar. 17, 2017
Eclectic pop singer Maisy Kay has released a new video to celebrate Disney's new live-action Beauty and the Beast film, starring Emma Watson, in theaters today (March 17th).
Maisy is joined by Grammy-nominee and Dancing with the Stars vocalist CJ Emmons for an impassioned, heart-felt duet of the title song from the original Disney classic. Watch "Beauty and the Beast" Cover Video by Maisy Kay below!
For Maisy, who fondly remembers dressing up in Disney princess gowns and singing to her dogs, the cover video was a chance to pay tribute to some of the music that was formative to her desire to pursue a career as a musician.
"Ever since I was a little girl, beauty and the beast has held a special spot in my heart. One of the first songs I remember falling in love with was Céline's take on the song in the end credits. Since that moment, I've always wanted to sing my own version of that song and try and do it justice. I am so glad that we finally all got together to make this happen. I got to work with a bunch of talented people throughout this experience, so a big thank you to CJ Emmons, and everyone who made this possible." - Maisy KayAsk Maisy Kay to single-out her music idol, and she'll immediately name-check Freddie Mercury, that glam-rock icon with an unabashed love of cabaret. But ask her whom she's dreamed of sounding like, and she'll just as promptly reference softer, torch-ballad legends Whitney Houston and Celine Dion. Those two influences may seem antithetical, and that's kind of the beguiling appeal of Maisy Kay - an iron-lunged ingenue whose voice effuses theatricality.
That dexterity in singing and songwriting has served her well. In less than five years, Maisy Kay has gone from a kid harboring starry dreams in Claverley (a hamlet in the English countryside) to a buzzy talent, poised to break out in Los Angeles. As fate would have it, she has been working on the bulk of her debut album with Stuart Brawley, the producer/engineer behind Dion's Let's Talk About Love.
A self-taught pianist, Maisy wrote her first song at age 10. "It was about a dragon. And a girl coming on a pirate ship to this new island," she recalls, laughing. To this day, Maisy eschews the pop world's tendency to recruit an arsenal of songwriters and only performs her own compositions. Many of them are penned daily around 3 a.m., her overactive mind waking her from slumber, willing her to write.
Maisy has spent the past three years bringing many of those tracks to life with a roll call of A-list producers. Among them: Brawley, Captain Cuts (Elle Goulding), Adam Argyle and Martin Brammer (Olly Murs), Jason Gaviati and Justin Siegel (Cassadee Pope, Black Eyed Peas), Kenny Harris (Panic! At the Disco), and Sameer Bhattacharya (Flyleaf). Enthuses Maisy, "Working with someone who's more on the poppy side and then with someone who's more on the classical side? I love that!"
Each producer has essentially reached the same conclusion upon first hearing her sing: Her shimmering, mezzo-soprano vocals, paired with intimate, pervasive confessionals are what make her the rarest of unicorns in the pop world. Maisy realizes this, too. "It's so important to have a personal connection to all of it," she says. "Every song is a journey."
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