5 Songs I Love w/ Brianna McGeehan

We sat down with Brianna McGeehan after the release of her stellar new tune 'Home', to discuss what influences shaped her unique sound. Be sure to check out the single at the bottom and follow her on socials!

Bob Marley- One love

Ok so picking one Bob Marley song wasn’t easy for me. BUT I can’t deny that this song was particularly influential for me. Bob Marley in my opinion is something of a prophet in the music world. His songs are folks songs that cross borders, they cross race and culture and a thousand other things and reach right into each of us. Find me someone who doesn’t like Bob Marley, you can’t, they don’t exist. As a lover of folk music I think Bob Marley is possibly the biggest star in modern day folk music. Songs everyone knows the words to, we can all sing along. This song though, is there a better sentiment? A more consistently relevant sentiment? I don’t think so. 

The Cranberries- Dreams

This was my favorite song from age seven on. It would come on the radio when I was a kid and I was obsessed.  Dolores O’Riordan was such a badass and the whole band was just so damn good. But “Dreams” is such an incredible song. Kind of simple and perfect. I could feel that perfection as a little musician kid and now as a full grown adult and songwriter I really just think that song is a little bit magic. It’s rather simple lyrically but so perfectly says what it needs to say and the whole production is just so good. I also admit I am a sucker for 90’s sounds and production. My 15 year old recently fell in love with the song and it’s having a second life in my world, which is super sweet. 

Regina Spektor - Fidelity

I just love Regina Spektor. I’m so inspired by the anti-folk movement and the freedom she inhabited in creating her sound. I probably listened to this song like 1000 times. It was one of those songs I heard when I was first starting to write music seriously and I was like, this is the kind of thing I want to do! 

The High Kings - Red is the Rose

Ok so I am a TOTAL folk music nerd at heart. Growing up in an Irish American family, singing the songs was one of my few tangible connections to my Irish heritage. I grew up singing this song with my dad and while I don’t remember listening to it, we honestly just sang it, this version is one that my kids have grown up with. It has always been my choice lullaby as a mother and if I had to pick one song in the whole world that I feel I have been the most effected by, this is it. 

Lauryn Hill - Everything is Everything

The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was a total life saver for me. Growing up in a predominantly white conservative suburb in the US, where I only received history from the perspective of white men, I would say this was my first course in Systemic Racism. The content of this album set me on course to study Racism in America and colonialism in College, and gave me some foundational understanding of actual reality. It was one of the few CD’s I had when I was in my second semester of College in Tanzania, living with an exiled black Panther (Pete O’neal) and furthering my racial education. I vividly remember listening to it with my Tanzanian friends on a boom box. Lauryn Hill talked openly about things people weren’t talking about in mainstream American music at the time. She was truly ahead of her time.  Ok and this song particularly, as a Buddhist (no longer practicing), I mean it is EVERYTHING, no pun intended.

Brianna McGeehan - Home