Lady Blackbird

Under the Lady Blackbird moniker, Los Angeles vocalist and composer Marley Munroe blends her own compositions with reinterpretations of vintage jazz ballads and lesser-known soul numbers. Predominantly acoustic arrangements supported her reflective first full-length, Black Acid Soul, which appeared in 2021 after more than ten years of session and behind-the-scenes contributions across multiple genres.

Raised on soul and gospel records supplied by her parents, Munroe began performing as a child and sang at numerous local functions throughout her early years in Farmington, New Mexico. A contract signed at age twelve with a Christian imprint yielded no solo output, yet she contributed vocals to dc Talk and spent considerable time recording and traveling with TobyMac. Freed from that agreement in her late teens, she shifted toward secular work, simultaneously building credits as both a recording artist and songwriter. An Epic deal led to two promotional retro-modern pop-soul singles in early 2013, though the planned album never materialized.

Before launching Lady Blackbird in February 2020 with her distinctive reading of Nina Simone’s “Blackbird,” Munroe had already co-written a pair of tracks for Anastacia’s Resurrection, joined Joseph Arthur on several projects, and formed a lasting creative alliance with producer Chris Seefried. A series of subsequent singles under the new alias preceded the September 2021 arrival of Black Acid Soul.