Birmingham’s Love Moor is Grabbing Ears Beyond the Magic City
Birmingham singer Love Moor cringes when asked about how her music is labeled.
“I don’t feel like I fit into any particular box,” says Moor.
It’s been called neo-soul. There are elements of R&B and hip-hop.
You’ll even hear some island sounds, thanks to her parents who are from the Caribbean.
After a career so far of performing around Birmingham, Love Moor is getting noticed beyond the Magic City.
Erica Andrew is her given name, although you’d better know her really well to call her that. She grew up in Miami and says music was embedded in her life practically from birth. Her mother wanted to be a singer. Her father was a DJ. She came to Birmingham in high school.
Her stage name developed as something of a self-empowerment symbol. There’s how it sounds. But the spelling is a nod to the Moors, who were North Africans in Spain during the Middle Ages.
“Moor is black people,” says Moor. “So it’s more like love self, love black, love me.”
Black identity, insecurity, and love are common themes in her music. That’s apparent on her second album, which came out last year, called “Simp Girl.” It’s a musing on love and relationships from a woman’s perspective. To understand why the lyrics are so fraught, it’s helpful to understand what “simp” means.
Moor says it usually refers to a guy who is interested in a girl, showers her with gifts, does all he can to catch her eye, but she doesn’t care and doesn’t reciprocate. Moor reverses the roles.
“That’s why it’s called ‘Simp Girl.’ Cause it’s the opposite side,” says Moor.
Some artists write as an imagined character, but Moor says this album came out of personal experience.
“It’s like I could be that crazy person and do that crazy stuff,” says Moor. “But I went ahead and put all my emotion into my art and it sounds good and I like it.”
She says she didn’t have a lot of expectations for the album. She planned to just drop it and move on. But “Simp Girl” seemed to strike a chord with fans, including men.
“I’ve even had guys [say] you make me think about, you made me feel guilty,” Moor says. “I was like, good!”
Love Moor has been picking up fans around Birmingham the last few years. That’s expanding. She played at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, this spring, even making it onto NPR’s list of artists to watch at the festival. She’ll be at Sloss Fest in Birmingham next month.
“I’m not overwhelmed, but I’m definitely ‘whelmed’ by it,” says Moor. “It feels great. I’m not sure what to call this space, but it’s just another section of growth.”
She says she’ll keep growing professionally and keep putting out music. Because for her, artistry is freedom.
The Dodgers want to win another World Series. The Toronto Blue Jays are in their way
The Los Angeles Dodgers have put all the chips in on their pursuit of being baseball's first back-to-back champions since 2000. The Blue Jays and their red-hot lineup won't go down easy.
The White House starts demolishing part of the East Wing to build Trump’s ballroom
Dramatic photos show construction equipment tearing into the East Wing façade and windows, though the federal agency that oversees such projects has not approved President Trump's 90,000-square-foot, $250 million ballroom.
Outage at Amazon Web Services disrupts websites across the internet
Amazon's cloud computing service provides back-end support to many companies that operate online. When it has problems, so do they.
Hollywood pushes OpenAI for consent
The latest version of OpenAI's Sora can quickly turn text prompts and simple images into studio quality videos, which left the entertainment industry deeply uneasy.
9th Circuit rules that National Guard can deploy to Portland
The appeals court overturned the ruling of a lower court judge in Oregon, and clears the way for President Trump to deploy the National Guard to Portland.
This isn’t the Louvre’s first high-profile heist. Here’s a history of earlier thefts
Masked thieves stole priceless jewels from the Louvre on Sunday morning. The Paris museum has suffered a string of successful art heists, dating back to the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911.
