How ‘Sing Sing’s’ Underdog Anthem Landed an Oscar Moonshot
Black Pumas' Adrian Quesada and Texan Abraham Alexander capture hope and yearning in prison
Rob LeDonne recently spoke with Oscar winner Kevin Macdonald about his Sundance doc One to One: John and Yoko. Rob also interviewed Oscar best original song noms Diane Warren (“The Journey”), Elton John and Brandi Carlile (“Never Too Late”) and the husband-wife duo behind the music of Emilia Pérez. He’s at rob@theankler.com
I’ll never forget Grammy weekend, January 2020 — and not just because the world changed just about a month later with the start of the Covid pandemic.
I attended Spotify’s Best New Artist party that year and witnessed performances by a powerhouse lineup of future superstars, including nominees Lizzo, Rosalía, Maggie Rogers and eventual winner Billie Eilish. Also in the mix was the rock-soul duo Black Pumas (Adrian Quesada and Eric Burton), who have become Grammy regulars, racking up an impressive seven nominations since that breakout year.
Now Quesada has joined another exclusive club: Oscar nominees. For this week’s Notable, I spoke with Quesada, 48, and Abraham Alexander, 34 — a singer and guitarist who’s collaborated with Leon Bridges, Mavis Staples and more — about their Sing Sing track “Like a Bird.” The two artists, who share Texas roots, first met in January 2020, when Alexander opened for Black Pumas at Dallas’ Kessler Theater (not long before I watched the band rock that Spotify party). When I spoke to them Friday morning, their heads were still spinning from the Oscar nomination — a turn most pundits “absolutely never saw coming,” as my colleague Katey Rich put it on her Prestige Junkie podcast Thursday.
Katey has her expert analysis of the full slate of nominations, and you can learn more about the other song nominees from my recent Notable interviews: Clément Ducol and Camille (for their Emilia Pérez tunes “El Mal” and “Mi Camino”), Diane Warren and her anthem for The Six Triple Eight (“The Journey”) and Elton John and Brandi Carlile’s apt “Never Too Late” from John’s biodoc. It’s great company for Quesada and Alexander, who edged out Lainey Wilson’s Twisters hit “Out of Oklahoma” and The Wild Robot’s Maren Morris mom anthem “Kiss the Sky” to make the final five.
The other big Oscar song news this week was the surprise that the Conan O’Brien-hosted ceremony on March 2 will forgo live performances of nominated tracks, dashing hopes for a performance from John and Carlile or a mini stage version of Emila Pérez (whose creators have hopes for a Broadway version one day, as they shared with me). I wondered why that decision was made, especially when the musical performances are often (okay, sometimes) highlights of the Oscars telecast. The Academy has said it instead plans to focus on the songwriters and “celebrate their artistry through personal reflections from the teams who bring these songs to life.”
Katey shed some more light for me: “It reflects the Academy and ABC’s continuing efforts to speed up the ceremony, and perhaps the lack of major star power among this year’s nominees,” she says. “If Beyoncé or Lady Gaga were a likely nominee again, it might be a different story. But I’m curious to see what they have in mind, and I love it when craftspeople like songwriters get an extra spotlight, so I’ll hold my complaints for now.”
So the Oscar audience won’t have a chance to hear Sing Sing’s “Like a Bird” performed live. It’s too bad — the first time I heard it, I was struck by the tender track, which features a lush acoustic guitar and a laid-back yet cool-as-hell guitar solo. The song, like the film (whose star and champion Colman Domingo nabbed a best actor nomination), was a passion project centered on prisoner rehabilitation. Heavy stuff, but Quesada and Alexander channeled it with an emotional ode to the power of perseverance.
Here’s what they told me about the “David and Goliath story” of their song and the film that inspired it.
‘The Essence of Every Human Being’s Emotion of Being Free’
Rob LeDonne: Where were you when the Oscar news came out, and how did you react?
Abraham Alexander: I was on the couch with my girlfriend watching the link [streaming the live nominations announcement] that my manager sent over. I had a cup of tea, drank it all and then refilled the cup with tears [of joy]. When I heard our names pop up, it was truly one of the most surreal moments of my entire life.
Adrian Quesada: I was dropping off my daughter [at school] when I got the first text. My heart just dropped; it was a beautiful and surreal morning
RL: It must be that much sweeter because it was such a surprise.
AA: Yeah, absolutely. But this has nothing to do with us, it has everything to do with the voters and the Academy for just seeing the film, hearing the song and championing it. One thing I wholeheartedly believe in is that the second person who believes in a dream is more important than the dreamer.
That’s something my dad told me, and it’s something that I’ve carried with me over the last two, three years. If you’ve been to any single one of my shows, I say this to the audience to let them know that this is what I believe. I feel appreciative for them spending a dollar; the biggest commodity right now is attention. I don’t take anything for granted, and I feel the same for people wanting to recognize something that is the underdog. It’s a David and Goliath story, Sing Sing in general, so for a film that hasn’t been seen on a broad scale and to have a song be recognized — with juggernauts that were on the shortlist — I don't take that lightly whatsoever.
RL: I know this film has been Colman Domingo’s passion project for a long time. Where in the process did you guys come in?
AQ: It was a couple years ago. It was funny, I was leaving the mall, Nordstrom’s to be exact, so as Abe and I joke, it all started in Nordstrom. Shout out, Nordstrom!
RL: Hello, discount! Nordstrom, are you listening?
AQ: Yeah, I know, exactly. Sponsored ad here, we’re just trying to get outfitted for the Oscars. (Laughs). But I bumped into a friend there who works in film and he was like, I’ve been meaning to reach out to you. There’s this director in Austin named Greg Kwedar, who is making this incredible film and he wants to connect. I remember his parting words were, “If anything out of Austin, Texas is going to be huge, it’s Greg and this film.”
I wound up having an incredible lunch with Greg, and as I’m leaving, the first person I thought of to collaborate on this was Abraham. Greg sent me an early trailer; they were still kind of finishing the film, but he told me they needed one song for the last scene. I watched that trailer and was in tears. I watched it over and over, sent it to Abe, and said to him, “I dare you to fight your tears back on this one.” It was serendipitous how beautifully it all came together.
RL: The lyrics relate to the film so well but also stand on their own. How did this allegory of birds came about?
AA: For me, it was the essence of every human being’s emotion of being free, whatever the circumstance. And what better personification than that of a bird? I envisioned people who are incarcerated, those who have families, wishing one day that they’re going to feel air on their face, air that isn’t tainted by blood, tainted by pain or tainted by anything holding them down. So that’s what I wanted to paint — not even specifically people who are incarcerated, but anyone who had this emotion of being held down by life.
RL: There’s a guitar solo in the song, which you don’t hear a lot of Oscar-nominated songs, perhaps with the exception of last year’s jokey Barbie anthem “I’m Just Ken.” Did that moment come about after riffing in the studio, or is that something you wrote out beforehand?
AQ: I have to give a lot of credit to Greg, the director, who kind of pushed me to do a guitar solo there. To be totally honest, I was hesitant about it. But he brought it up a couple of times, and it doesn't take that much prodding for me to be like, “Okay, I'll do a guitar solo!” Because I do like to play guitar. But I played along to the film three or four times and really wanted to be in the moment with it; I wanted to react to what I was seeing on the screen, so that when you’re watching the film with it, the emotions are bouncing back and forth.
RL: Abraham, your big break was playing lead guitar with Leon Bridges, and you’ve had an incredible path since. Did it feel like a launchpad at the time?
AA: I owe a lot to that dude; he’s been such a beautiful brother to me. He invited me to the studio when he was doing (his 2015 breakout album) Coming Home, and I had never witnessed anything like that. I'll forever cherish that memory. Then post-pandemic, he took me out on my first major tour. And it was because of that that I got my break and signed my record deal. I’m so grateful for him and the mentor that he’s been to me.
RL: Before all that you had soccer ambitions — but an ACL tear completely derailed that dream, which is when you started playing guitar. I was thinking how crazy it is that the injury, which probably really sucked at that time, indirectly led you to become an Oscar nominee.
AA: Oh, that’s cool, man. Come on, bro! I need you to just do podcasts all day so I can just listen to your affirmations. Um, man. (Long pause) I never thought of it like that. But a lot of things that cause pain usually end up being the biggest launching pads. I’m thankful for the things that soccer, aka football, taught me. I was born in Greece and lived there till I was 11-years-old. And soccer was everything for me. It helped me to understand culture and language. It was how I identified myself, and when I lost it, I sort of lost who I was. Then getting a guitar in my hand unlocked something in me that I didn't even know existed.
RL: You never know your good breaks from your bad ones. That’s a quote from Ina Garten. But I find it inspirational, because you could have gotten injured and said, “You know what? Fuck it. Life’s unfair.” Also, if you had played soccer, you would have gotten what, 10 years out of it? Meanwhile, guys like Willie Nelson are playing guitar into their 90s.
AA: Absolutely. Shout out to people like Willie Nelson and Mavis Staples. They’re inspirations of mine that are still keeping that legacy alive, showing us what it's like to be in your element for a really long time.
RL: Adrian, you’ve already been a Grammy darling with Black Pumas scoring seven nominations since 2020. Now you’re thrust into the Oscar race for the first time. Have you noticed any differences?
AQ: I have, to be honest. One thing that’s different is the sheer number of awards that happen around the Oscars, from the Golden Globes through the Screen Actors Guild Awards. It seems like momentum builds as the awards happen and they all influence each other; that’s a different kind of game for sure. There’s no build-up to the Grammys. But I’m still kind of learning, and Abe and I are just happy to be here and to soak it all in.
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