Alina Baraz

Alina Baraz’s purr of a voice is deceptively vulnerable—her soft-focus coo drifts within her subdued production choices, but she’s always in control as she unfurls notes that sound as seductive as they do sweet. Born in 1993 in Cleveland, Ohio, the singer/songwriter was raised on classical music until, as a teenager, she came across the pop-soul of Amy Winehouse, Corinne Bailey Rae and Adele. Those genre-blurring influences are felt in Baraz’s creations, first heard on 2015’s Urban Flora, a collaborative EP with Denmark electronic producer Galimatias that featured the atmospheric, piano-guided “Make You Feel”. Therein, Baraz ups the intimacy by nearly whispering her way through a tale of a blossoming romance. A similarly heady interpretation of an intoxicating love, “Electric”, featuring Khalid at his dreamiest, appeared on 2018’s The Color of You EP. In 2020, Baraz released her full-length debut, It Was Divine—“To Me”, a cathartic cut about love’s dwindling embers, illustrates her lockstep relationship with her music. “This is the most important song in my career thus far,” Baraz tells Apple Music. “It’s really altered my life as a person, not even as an artist. Sometimes I find that writing gives you a second voice that you’ll listen to more than yourself.”