As an award-winning vocalist, song-writer and producer, Natalie Nicole Gilbert has never been afraid to experiment with her sound or style, or create something that some might say is a little “out-there”. Case in point; her new album, Warm Winter. The collection brings together ten renditions of some of her favourite Winter and holiday themed songs including Joni Mitchell’s “River” and “Falling” by Harry Styles, and PopWrapped caught up with her to talk about the album’s creative and recording process, the record she’s most proud of and what’s ahead for her in 2021.

Congratulations on your new album, Warm Winter. With so many great holiday season songs out there, how did you go about narrowing it down to 10 songs?

First, I wanted to include songs that spoke of snow or seasons that weren’t strictly holiday songs. In the lead up to the holidays, even – or especially – in a year like this one where everyone needs a boost of hope and joy, an overabundance of carols and holiday themes can create an overdose of saccharin sounds that feel out of touch with reality. Throughout my catalog I’ve always leaned into more grounded lyrics mixed with ethereal tones, so I wanted to bring that seasoning of minor chords to my solo holiday album as well.

As such, I added in “Landslide” and “Falling,” as well as “Vincent” and “Wrapped Up in a Dream Called You.” All four of those could be listened to at any time of year, but they have an added weight in the winter as we say goodbye to one year and begin the next. The next essential ingredient is nostalgia, and that encompasses a lot of genres for me because I grew up with a professional concert pianist. So I added “Walking in the Air” from The Snowman animated film, “Pie Jesu” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem, and “Grown Up Christmas List.” Knowing I’d have Andrew Joslyn’s lovely string arrangements folded into the mix enabled me to really lean into some powerful and less pop rendered stylings on those songs, which all of them really seemed to deserve.

“River” was one that I tossed to my longtime co-writer Dana Bisignano knowing he’s a huge Joni Mitchell fan and could really do that arrangement justice on the piano. Though it’s technically a holiday song, it’s certainly less conventional so it felt in keeping with the handful of non-holiday songs on the tracklist. I also pinged my film composer collaborator Jonathan Still to see if he had time to join the project. I mentioned that I had once fit the lyrics of “O Holy Night” over the melody of Schubert’s “Ave Maria” and invited him to think about any other classic carols we could mix and match that way. He came up with the idea of taking the lyrics to “What Child is This” and fitting them over the “We Three Kings” melody and did all the arranging on our new blend called “What Child of Kings.”

The surprise track was “That Will Be Christmas.” Many listeners don’t know the 20-year-old original version of this song (by Sandra Payne), and I felt like it should be updated and reintroduced to audiences. Robert Eibach did a beautiful job updating the beats and instrumentation.  This track wound up having the most moving pieces. The original had a full choir, and that was clearly something we weren’t going to be able to easily replicate in the midst of Covid lockdowns limiting safe gatherings of large groups.

I had the pleasure of connecting with Jarrett Johnson – of Take 6 – earlier this year during the first-round Grammy voting season as we both shared music we had on the ballot for consideration; I knew he could bring warmth to this track, as well as his special brew of joyful harmonies.

The missing piece remained those choir elements, which were so essential to this song because they’re very call-and-response with the lead vocal lyrics. So I texted Lisa Ramey – of NBC’s The Voice. She and I met while she was in town to film The Voice; they were on media lock so she was mostly confined to The Voice set and their hotel block, but her manager was a friend of ours and told us she could use a few hours of fresh air with people not in the Voice cast or crew, so we kidnapped her for lunch at the Los Angeles branch of the H Club, since closed due to Covid, sadly. I knew she had the vocal chops to give those response segments the harmonies and power vocals they required, and thankfully she was able to get me her tracks in just a few days as we came down to the wire on our deadline for the album. If she hadn’t nailed them so quickly we would have had to put the track to the side and wait until a post-Covid time when we could reconvene a vocal ensemble, but she beautifully put the finishing polish on those elements. Jarrett’s harmonies and vocal arrangements really freshened and elevated his duet portions, too. We blended tracks from three different studios, all recording our vocals separately from New York to LA, but in the end it worked perfectly and sounded like we were in the same space.

On your Warm Winter album, you brought on major composers, including Andrew Joslyn, Dana Bisignano and Jonathan Still — all of whom have won awards and worked with huge artists. What was it like collaborating with them? What were some of the biggest challenges during this process, particularly during a pandemic?

The beauty is that all of us were already working on other projects together. Somewhere along the way in August or September I mentioned to a few of them that maybe we could work on a quick Christmas single or two. Then the single became an EP, and the EP became a full 10 track album because all of them are total pros who could create radio-ready holiday tracks starting as late as September or October when big label artists would already be rolling out their holiday releases that they had recorded back in July. But there’s something about that tight timeline that helps you be a little less precise and perfectionistic about the end result. There’s no album that would benefit least from an overly mechanical fine-tooth comb making sure every line is perfect and all emotion is removed than a holiday album. So even though it was tough to pivot and work on this project at warp speed, it was also really freeing and beautiful to focus our energy on these songs that are so timeless that they almost perform themselves.

You’re a woman of many talents — among them TV and film composing. What are some of the compositions you’re the most proud of and which shows or films do they appear in?

Two come to mind. One was based on a book character my sister introduced me to that was very popular that year. At her behest I read the book but it wasn’t the main characters that stood out to me, but rather a secondary character. So I wrote the song “Breathing Hope” about this vampire doctor, an oxymoron of sorts. The song was never picked up by the filmmakers who developed the films based on the books, but the fans of the franchise found it anyway and the song went viral with tens of thousands of streams and suddenly teens in other countries were on YouTube singing their renditions of my song. For an introvert recording in my apartment bedroom at the time, it was quite surreal.

The second was an acapella lullaby I didn’t write myself, but I was asked to sing it for a TV show at the last minute. So I learned the song that morning and we tracked it in Pasadena that afternoon for an episode of CBS’s The Family during a sort of creepy flashback. Usually, by the time I record something I’ve known the song for a while, so recording a British lullaby the same day I learned it without the benefit of any instrumentation was a curious experience, but I was pleased with the end result.

I read you’ve released over a dozen albums of original music ranging from EDM to jazz to alt pop rock. Is there a particular genre that you feel at home with the most, in either songwriting and/or performing?

Oddly enough R&B feels most comfortable for me. In the grand scheme of things R&B is a trio of pop, soul or gospel, and jazz. It’s not a realm that people would assume is my sweet spot when they see my hazel eyes and olive skin, but it’s always been the music I gravitated to long before I understood its background or what defined it. I’m really grateful that my mother’s playing for ballet classes and community musicals exposed me to songs like “Stormy Weather” or Motown hits and timeless gospel stylings from a very young age. It blessed me with this ability to be unafraid of touching any genre or era of music, and finding a way to make any song my own – with my own key, rhythm or spin on it.

It’s often disconcerting to come from that background and circulate my music in an industry eager to label every album with a tidy, narrow genre and subgenre. It can paint me in this corner of jazz when my album has R&B and classical tracks or pop when my album has rock and jazz on it. The industry at large doesn’t quite know how to categorize someone like me, but I don’t let that get in the way. I’m very mindful and painstaking in the way one song segues to another when I build my tracklists, and that fine detail keeps the album feeling cohesive even if it embodies five different genres.

Of all the albums you’ve released, which one are you most proud of and why?

Warm Winter is my most elaborate album to date and I am very proud of this one, which is undoubtedly my best and bravest so far.  However, I’d say my Skeletal album is the one I’m most proud of that was really career shaping and stretched my skills as a songwriter and audio engineer. It was the first album I released after I was hit by a SUV on my morning jog, and I used the x-rays from the accident as the album cover. It was a collection of 16 demos largely self-produced and recorded in my West Hollywood apartment at the time. I had recorded many albums previously with more formal studio recordings, but this was the first one I released on the then new platform called iTunes. I’ve since let it expire on primary digital outlets when I switched distributors, but we’ve just re-released it via Bandcamp. It includes another holiday carol mashup of “O Holy Night” and “Silent Night” with a cappella harmonies. There are so many things I would naturally change about the audio production now a decade later, but for its time and what I learned during the experience I’m forever grateful I made the leap of releasing it commercially.

As someone who has also been on the radio side of the music industry, you must have heard hundreds or more of songs on the radio. What in your mind makes a song the most successful at radio?

Staying power. This is really true at the songwriting level as much as the produced audio master level. It’s a litmus test I often use when I write new songs now. I’ll write it down but walk away and see if the song haunts me, if it returns to me later. If it does and it returns with different or shortened lyrics, that’s the version I record and release. The lyrics I’ve forgotten clearly don’t have that staying power. Some call this being sticky or catchy or having a great memorable hook. But I don’t think it’s just about the chorus or one line that everyone remembers; I think what really keeps stations and listeners hitting replay is that the song transports you to a place or time that’s real and familiar. A song is a ticket to where you want to be or where you have been; people listen to music to revisit or to fast forward.

You have also done voiceover work for films and national TV commercials for McDonalds, Cadillac, Quiznos and others. What were some of the most interesting voice over projects you’ve worked on?

I did a documentary on sawfish that was a fun departure from the more common McDonald’s and car commercials I often get selected to record. While tracking voiceovers for clients, especially long scripts like a documentary, you don’t usually hear the soundtrack while you’re reading, but with that one I absolutely understood what kind of music would be mixed in later. It called for speaking from my lower register the whole time and emulating that Discovery channel vibe, as if I didn’t want to disturb the fish I knew would be on screen as I spoke in the final mix. It was almost like reading a bedtime story to adults. It was also a joy to support an effort to preserve a species by drawing attention to their dwindling numbers as they approach extinction.

So what is next for Natalie Nicole Gilbert in 2021?

All these delightful collaborators I pulled into my holiday project are returning to the projects we were working on before this gleeful departure into snow and bells – a collection of covers around a theme of wellbeing and self-care. It includes tracks like “Sorry Not Sorry” by Demi Lovato, which we’re polishing in the studio today. After a year like 2020, all of us could use an album like Recovery in 2021 – new takes on familiar songs that remind us we have the strength to make it through to the other side.

You can listen to Warm Winter below and for more information on Natalie Nicole Gilbert, give her page a like on Facebook or follow her on Twitter and Instagram. Natalie photo credit: Kim Hardy (London).