Artist bares her soul in debut CD
By day Belinda Brady is just like any other employee at Multicom Media, a publishing company based in North Toronto.
The business development manager lines up to use the company’s busiest photocopier, goes for coffee with fellow employees and meets with potential clients to land new sales contracts.
No one would ever guess that, come night while the majority of Multicom’s employees are at home planning their next day, Brady is planning an entirely different move — her music career.
For more than 10 years the North York resident has been carving out a successful solo career as a pop and reggae singer/songwriter.
Brady, who in the mid-1990s sang backup for Bob Marley’s son Julian and Shaggy, performing alongside him during his 1995-96 Boombastic tour, has released a slew of singles through the years. The release last month of her debut album, Naked, has catapulted Brady even further into the public eye.
So much so that fellow employees are starting to take notice.
“No matter what I do or where I am in life, up until the day I die I will be an artist,” says Brady while sitting in one of the company’s boardrooms in September. “The whole stardom thing is not such a high priority as it was back in the day.
“I could be working at Multicom or anywhere else. I will still be an artist.”
Music is in her blood, the two-time Juno Award nominee says. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, she remembers spending her childhood in a recording studio with her father, Carl Brady, an original member of Byron Lee and the Dragonaires, one of the Caribbean’s longest-running reggae acts.
Later she joined the Jamaica Musical Theatre Company and a gig singing backup for soca star Denyse Plummer soon followed. With a move to Toronto in 1993, Brady picked up where she left off, all the while juggling corporate jobs. It wasn’t long before she met music impresario Farley Flex, who later signed her to his Plasma Corporation label.
Her CD isn’t about “getting naked” as its title suggests, Brady says. Sure, the 12-track album is full of Brady-penned songs about the highs and lows of intimate relationships, but Naked is about being true to no one but herself, she says.
“The music is real … there’s no pretending,” says Brady, who is planning a Canadian tour this fall.
One experience she opens up about is breaking up with a longterm boyfriend.
The first single off the CD, “I Cried”, details the emotions she experienced in trying to make sense of the abrupt end to a nearly eight-year relationship. The video for the song is currently being shopped around to TV stations.
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t allow me to forget the darn guy, because every day I’m singing the song at some show or something,” Brady says, with a laugh. “But the songwriting has definitely helped me to heal.
“It’s like going to a therapist to talk about what’s going on so you can sort it out. This is my therapy.”
While she started out as a purely reggae singer, her work with Flex has led her to incorporate different genres of music — folk, rock and pop — into her repertoire. The reason, says Brady, was to make sure she didn’t pigeonhole herself into one category.
And Naked reflects that. Although the first single is contemporary pop, songs like “Breathe” reference her reggae roots while “Get Out” and others have more of a rock vibe.
And Toronto being one of the most diverse cities in Canada, let alone the world, singing a range of genres guarantees reaching a wider audience, Brady says.
“I’m a musician, an artist,” says Brady, who was nominated for a 1998 Juno Award for the reggae recording, “Flex (Dancehall Mix)”. A second nod came in 2003 for the song “Gifted Man”.
“I want to be looked upon as the real deal,” she says. “Bob Marley is the real deal. Joni Mitchell is the real deal. I’m the real deal.”