When you ask Melissa Young who some of her creative inspirations are, she won’t list names like Gladys Knight or Tina Turner as you might expect. “Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese and Terrence Malick are the three that sit at the top for me,” she’ll say. It all makes sense, too, once you realize the lady who absolutely floors you with her sweet sound went to grad school in New York for film. While in school, the part-time singer got connected with Bob Marley’s son, Ky-mani. Young, a South Carolina native, sang background with Marley on his tours, all the while capturing every moment on stage in her head like any good director might. She ultimately made the trip down to Atlanta to focus on her solo music career. Just Up the Road is the result, and let’s just say if Melissa knows her way around a camera like she does warm stories of the heart, the Coen Brothers had better watch out.
What’s your favorite part about this whole music thing?
It has to be being on stage. Of all of it, that’s when I feel the most at home - when I’m on stage and I have good sound and I can perform and relate to the audience. I love it the most. I’m absolutely certain.
Tell me a little about growing up in Greenville.
Wow, it was an amazing place to grow up in. I’m from a really big family. I’m the youngest girl of 10 children. My mom and dad were busy, very busy. I grew up with my brothers and sisters. Growing up then, Greenville wasn’t that developed at that time. It has grown tremendously now. I grew up singing when I was really young. I departed from that for a little while. I was trying to do other things, but always with music. I think I started my own lil’ group when I was 15. That went nowhere. But I was always trying to find my way into the entertainment world just as a creative person. I went to Greenville Senior High School. I did a lil’ acting in the drama club there and [I was] in the chorus. Then I went on to college but I enjoyed growing up in Greenville a lot.
How’d you make the journey to Atlanta?
Well, I went to college at Howard University. That was really the turning point in my life. I was concentrating on film production. I found my way back to music because I was a background singer for a local singer in Washington D.C. By my senior year, I met Ky-Mani Marley, Bob Marley’s youngest son. I started singing background for him. We toured pretty much all over the world. We were in Germany actually and I had this epiphany on stage that I just couldn’t deny what I loved any longer. It was obvious that music was what I loved and what I needed to be doing. But I had already gotten into graduate film school. We came back from Europe and I stared graduate film school, like, two weeks later. I moved to New York. I had always wanted to record my own stuff, the songs that I write and hear in my head constantly. I tried to get better at the writing process and tried to get better at the structure of songs and songwriting. I met a producer that was serious after going through a ton of producers who were not serious. I met a guy that was really serious. He lived in the Bronx, and we just started working on music. After I came to a stopping point at NYU, it just seemed like the entire time I was in New York I was hearing about people in Atlanta, in the soul genre of music coming back to the forefront. Maybe this was an opportunity for me to move back south and be closer to my family again. Being in New York, I loved the city. I hope to own something there at some point. But you know, when you’re there it’s very expensive. All you think about is how to make the rent. It limited my time at being creative, so I moved to Atlanta and the rest is history.
Has Atlanta been all that you had hoped?
Yes and no. It has definitely allowed me to do all of things that I’ve wanted to do musically up to this point. There’s so much more I’d like to do. What I would love for Atlanta’s soul community of artists to open their minds a lil’ more and expand their minds to what they consider soul music. Sometimes Atlanta can be clique-ish. It’s not the only city in the country that has this problem. Just in general as musicians, as people, we need to learn to be a little bit more open-minded and think outside the box. Accept the people and let them do what they do. It has gotten better for me here. That’s just some of the things that I wanna change. I wanna open up things to where you don’t feel like you have to do a certain type of stuff. I’d love to see it get to that point. That’s my only lil’ thing that kinda got under my skin just a lil’ bit. Everyone else all over the country, they don’t have a problem with it, but in Atlanta, if you’re not doing a certain type of drum kick and a certain type of this, the powers that be can sometimes not be that receptive. But I hear that all cities are like that. When you’re accepted outside of the city that you’re based out of, your city is the last one to come on board. That’s what I hear. People are receptive hear to me, but I can still see how challenging it is. I have a lot of friends that are trying to make it. They’re trying to get to the point that we’ve been lucky enough to get to. This is challenging here in Atlanta for them
What are you most proud of with Just Up the Road?
I’m most proud of the album being me. It’s exactly what I wanted it to be. It’s exactly where I was at the time that I wrote the songs. It’s an accurate portrayal of what I was feeling and where I was at the time. That’s the thing that I’m most proud of. It took us a long time to do it because we’re independent. But in the end, I can honestly say that I did it my way. That’s probably the thing I’m most proud of. Being able to have my father on the album (the title song) is a very proud moment, too.
That song talks about some of the obstacles you’ve faced. Why didn’t you give up and try another career path?
You know what? I think if something is your passion and it’s what you love, I think it’s your duty as a human being to constantly pursue it because it becomes a pursuit of happiness. To me, I’m happiest when I’m doing music. I can make films all day long. I’ve been told I’m a sound filmmaker. I enjoy it, but it’s not my passion. We shot my music video here on Saturday. That’s the first time I’ve been involved in a film production in well over a year and I don’t feel that I’ve missed anything. Say I go a week without singing a note or writing down an idea that comes to my head, I literally feel ill. I tell people that and they’re like, “Wooow!” I tell other artists, and they’re like, “I know what she means.” It’s what you have to do. If no one ever hears your music, I’d still be making music. It’s inside of me. I have to get it out. I just think, more than anything, you keep going because you have to. It’s what drives you.
