Cynthia Erivo wrote Brandy a letter when she was a teenager to thank her for writing her 1998 album Never Say Never.
The Widows actress was “obsessed” with The Boy Is Mine singer’s second studio album and decided to reach out and let her know much she appreciated her record.
“I was obsessed with it and I would play it over and over,” Cynthia, 37, recalled during The Hollywood Reporter’s Songwriters Roundtable. “I was like 12 or something and I wrote her a letter because I was just obsessed with her voice, I’d never heard anyone like that. Something about the sounds that she was making connected with me really really deeply. I think I bought more than one of those (CDs).
“I think I just wrote that she was my favourite singer and I think I must have thanked her for writing the album or something. I don’t know, I just really connected with it and something about the way she used harmony in her songs was like new to me so it felt like, ‘Oh, I like that, I like what she’s doing with her voice, I want to learn to do that with my voice.’ Yeah, it was really special.”
The British actress noted that Burna Boy’s 2023 song, Sittin’ on Top of the World, which samples Brandy’s Top of the World, is “a nice little throwback” to her teenage years and she has been “playing that over and over again”.
