The legendary R&B group joins Estelle to talk about re-inventing themselves, musical influences, pandemic activities, and much, much more.
En Vogue on Reinventing Themselves
We had to sort of reinvent ourselves for this year, at home and how are we going to celebrate our 30th anniversary? So we came up with a podcast, as well. Just to stay connected with our fans and our friends. We did a few online performances, so we really just had to just go with the flow, take the pause, just to sort of reconnect with ourselves.
En Vogue’s Cindy Herron on Cats Musical Influence
When I was in high school I was still doing a lot of musical theater. At the time the biggest, newest Broadway musical that was out was Cats. It was just everything to all of us in the theater department. Just the whole soundtrack. I loved that song. That was one of the songs that I loved singing. That’s why I picked ‘Memory’ because it reminds me of high school and just being in the theater department.
En Vogue’s Terry Ellis on Natalie Cole Influence
For me as a kid, when I first started singing, my sister would play Natalie Cole all the time. I sort of had gotten attached to her, and so, when my sister discovered that I could sing, she would have me practicing to Natalie Cole all the time, and, ‘I’m Catching Hell’ was one. And I was so young, lord knows, I didn’t know what I was singing, and I would always be afraid to… I would change the word, ‘Hell’, because I was too young to be saying it.
En Vogue Favorite Girl Groups
Definitely Salt-N-Pepa, SWV. I’ll say Destiny’s child, because I think they discovered Frank Gatson by way of us. And so you do see some of the similar nuances in choreography and a little bit of that essence from them. We all like India. Yes. Yes, absolutely. There’s so many. I like what Brandy is doing right now. She’s an excellent, excellent performer. Yeah. I look at like the young girls, like Normani, and some of those as well. And I’m just like-
Oh yeah, Normani. Oh, she’s killer. Yeah. She’s crazy.
En Vogue’s Rhona Bennett on Vickie Winans
She’s just an absolutely incredible singer. And if anybody listens, I can’t wait till you share this record with your audience, because when you hear the whole song come out of this woman’s interpretation, it can blow you away where she takes you. And just as a vocal-. that is so inspiring. I think I got lucky, and probably Cindy and Terry might feel the same, the era of music that we got an opportunity to grow up in, because [inaudible] were off the charts. And that’s what helped to shape us as vocalists. You know?
