Shayna Steele

Jazz musician, Broadway performer, and powerhouse vocalist Shayna Steele released Gold Dust, a genre-spanning collection of originals and covers.

Jazziz included “The Bloodline” from the album in their “Editors’ Choice” calling it a “powerful track,” and Atwood Magazine called the accompanying video “a cinematic, beautifully intimate black-and-white visual…captur[ing] the depth, the passion, the emotion, and the raw energy at the core of Steele’s inspiring song.”  Steele wrote an essay about the origins of the song here.

Other tracks on the album include a rollicking cover of Fleetwood Mac’s song “Gold Dust Woman” (the original version most recently heard in “Daisy Jones & The Six”) as well as a cover of Cole Porter’s “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To” featuring GRAMMY-nominated jazz saxophonist Donny McCaslin.  The video for the latter addresses Steele’s internal struggle between being a touring musician and mom to her 10-year-old daughter Caia.

Steele, a former demo and backup singer for Jennifer Hudson, Kelly Clarkson, Rihanna, and Bette Midler and original Broadway cast member of Hairspray began work on Gold Dust reluctantly during a period of paralyzing self-doubt during the pandemic.  While finishing her music degree during lockdown at Berklee College Of Music, she found songwriting to be cathartic.  It was there that she penned “The Bloodline,” a reverent but hopeful commentary on social justice and racial issues in the United States sparked by the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.