Heed Magazine: ‘Journey to Freedom’ Exclusive with Michelle Williams

From the record-breaking R&B/pop group Destiny’s Child to the top of the gospel charts, singer, songwriter, record producer and actress Michelle Williams is an international sensation, with eleven #1 singles, more than 50 million records sold worldwide and over 150 awards including three Grammys. In 2002, Williams released her first solo album, the award-winning #1 gospel album Heart to Yours, which featured collaboration with the legendary Shirley Caesar, hit #3 on the Top Contemporary Christian Albums chart and became the year’s top-selling gospel album. She followed in 2004 with her critically-acclaimed second gospel album Do You Know, and in 2008 released her third solo album, the hit R&B/pop album Unexpected.

After several successful endeavors in theater and music, Michelle Williams is gearing up to release her 4th album Journey to Freedom in the early part of next year. Today she released the music video for the 1st single off the upcoming album, “If We Had your Eyes”! Produced by Harmony Samuels, “If We Had Your Eyes” has quickly grabbed attention from Williams’ sneak preview, as her powerful vocals and the driving mid-tempo rhythm inspire listeners to examine their faith and God’s perspective with the lyrics, If we had your eyes, we’d see things right/ If we could just see from your point of view, then most things won’t be as they seem.

HEED had the chance to chat with Michelle Williams about her new single, upcoming album, and what it was like performing with Beyonce & Kelly Rowland again during the Superbowl halftime show! Check out the interview and her brand new video for “If We Had Your Eyes”!

Heed Magazine: How you doing Ms. Michelle Williams?

Michelle Williams: I’m very well how are you?

Heed: I’m doing very well, I can’t complain about anything! And I’m looking forward to this interview and thank you so much for giving us this time.

MW: Thank you so much for having me!

Heed: You’re very welcome!

Heed: Tell me a little bit about your new single “If We Had Your Eyes”, and what inspired it?

MW: Well, it was almost already done when I got to the studio. I worked with songwriters Courtney Harrell and Al Sherrod Lambert on this song. Sherrod had this amazing experience earlier that day and it’s kind of like as a writer you can’t wait to get to the studio or you can’t to get to place to write especially when something has inspired you, you know? And, the first verse of the song actually tells his story which is cleverly, cleverly written. So that was the inspiration behind it. Can you imagine walking down the street and someone homeless having to ask you for money…you give them the money and then before you know it they say something to you that totally changes your life. You’re like “Huh? Really?” You just don’t expect that. You just think you’re doing them a favor, not knowing that God could use them to say something encouraging to you.

Heed: With that, you do Gospel Music but most of us know you professionally from singing R&B. How difficult was that transition of going from R&B to Gospel? Was it difficult at all?

MW: You know it was not difficult for me. I think people made it difficult because they were coming up with their own conclusions about what they felt they knew about me. Now, to a degree it ended up having some type of affect on me, kind of almost causing me to rebel against ever doing gospel music again. One thing I don’t feel in R&B and that’s judgement. Never have I felt that in even dance music or pop music. You don’t feel judgement, and that was another reason why I couldn’t wait to sing “If We Had Your Eyes”. You know how Mary Mary sings that song “God In Me”? You don’t know why that person is so successful. You know, but what the song says is that “what you don’t know is when she get’s home and get behind closed doors, she’s on her knees.” So, you know people don’t know that for me it was an easy transition because first and foremost my foundation is gospel music, but like you said professionally you know me from R&B. But I grew up in church, I was in church everyday. Raised in the Church of God in Christ. I was a choir director, worship leader, I was on the youth usher board, I was a youth nurse, I was on hospitality so I wore lots of hats in church, but also to go with my church upbringing I was always in the performing arts in school, so you can’t tell someone who was exposed to the arts so young in age that they can only do one thing and only do it one way.

Heed: That’s very true. Now piggybacking off of that, I know you’ve been doing theater. How have those experiences been?

MW: Well you know theater is great because you can incorporate that with live performances and when you go on tours. There are some cool things that I’ve learned technique wise from doing theater. Theater makes you very strong, especially on Broadway because you do 8 shows a week. Eight shows a week times 4? That’s like 32 shows a month, so I have no choice but to have gotten stronger and it’s something that I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoy doing. When I was in school, we grew up on productions like ‘Hello Dolly’, ‘Oklahoma’…doing dance recitals…this and that. So, I’ve been very much exposed to all types of things in the arts. Musically, my dad is the one that exposed us! Everything from Jazz to Heavy Metal you know? I know about The Yellow Jackets to Led Zeppelin, Bon Jovi, Chaka Khan, The Winans…you know what I mean? The Hawkins Singers to Anita Baker, Sting, Al Jarreau! My dad had vinyl, and literally he had them in milk crates! That’s how many records he had because he used to be a DJ. So, imagine all the records that he had to spin as far as being a DJ. So that’s why my taste in music is so different. I think that’s why I love all types and I want to do all types of music because it’s like “oh my goodness, this is so amazing!” I love it!

Heed: So how do you manage to balance all of this and still at the end of the day find time to just be Michelle Williams?

MW: You have to make time. And I have to admit there are times when I’m running and running and my body will let me know “hey, it’s time” and I definitely have no shame in paying attention to that at all. Having family. I have young nieces and nephews, so when I’m home I focus on watching them because they’ll grow up so quickly. I love my family!

Heed: Let’s switch gears a little bit and talk about the Superbowl this past February! How was that experience for you?

MW: You know what, we just kind of finished where we left off. There was no big opening ceremony, there was no big lets sit in a circle and map this thing out, we literally walked into rehearsals like “okay, what’s up? What we doing?” you know? Really it was like, you would not think that we hadn’t toured in about 8 years together. But that comes from myself and Kelly still touring and being on stage. I mean when we were rehearsing for the Superbowl I was also in ‘Fela’ rehearsals so I was going from one rehearsal to the next and that’s how you can kind of seamlessly multitask and do a lot of things without having to prepare way in advance.

Heed: Well, kudos to you guys, it was an amazing half time show!

MW: Thank you!

Heed: You’re very welcome, and it was good to see you all on stage again together. So tell me a little bit about your upcoming album. What can we expect from it and are there any exciting features that we should be anticipating?

MW: The album is titled “Journey to Freedom”, I can definitely tell you that! It comes out in February, so as far as me announcing features right now, ehh, I’m not going to do that just yet! I’m going to wait a couple of months! What I like doing is giving people snippets and kind of spoon feeding information, because if I give it all away to you right now, nobody will care when it comes around. So, I’m just happy about the urban inspirational sound and the producer that I worked with. You know, I kind of went back to the day where you only worked with one producer. I did go into the studio with Warryn Campbell as well, but Harmony Samuels is the main producer of this album. He has worked with Fantasia, Kelly Rowland, Jennifer Hudson, Chris Brown…just to name a few. But I am his first kind of faith based project that he has worked on.

Heed: That’s amazing. Harmony is a dope producer, so I’m sure what you guys make will be an incredible work!

MW: I understood that just because something is gospel, doesn’t mean that it can’t have relevant beats and sounds, you know what I mean? That it can’t have relevant vocal arrangements, you know? And even how I shot my video, I’m able to use where I’ve come from and what I’ve learned over the past 14 years and that’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to apply that to every area of my professional life.

Heed: You’re working on the album, and the new single is out. What can we look forward to in the next couple of weeks, months?

MW: Well, the upcoming months is straight promotion for my new album and new single which is already out. Matter of fact you can download my new single on iTunes, Google Play and Amazon! So, that’s really what I’m doing. Hopefully maybe next year, touring and maybe the year after that doing some more broadway!

Heed: Well that sounds incredible Michelle, and we will be watching out for everything you have going on.

MW: Thank you so much!

Follow Michelle Williams on Twitter @RealMichelleW and on Instagram @realmichellew! Also visit www.iammichelle.com for exclusive updates and performance dates!

Source: Heed Magazine