{"id":484822,"date":"2019-04-18T08:30:39","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T14:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=823504"},"modified":"2019-04-18T08:30:39","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T14:30:39","slug":"they-were-a-small-indie-band-in-new-york-then-beyonce-made-a-request","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/they-were-a-small-indie-band-in-new-york-then-beyonce-made-a-request\/","title":{"rendered":"They Were a Small Indie Band in New York. Then Beyonce Made a Request"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/florist-beyonce-doc.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p><span>About two months ago, Emily Sprague, the singer-songwriter behind the New York-based indie collective Florist, received an email from her publishing company with the subject line \u201c\u2018Thank You\u2019 for Confidential Project.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>When Sprague opened the email, she was shocked. \u201cI started reading and saw Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s name, and I was just like, wait a minute, what?\u2019\u201d Sprague tells<\/span> <em><span>Rolling Stone<\/span><\/em><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>It turned out that Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s team wanted to use Sprague\u2019s 2016 song \u201cThank You\u201d as an instrumental to be played during a climactic spoken-word Maya Angelou interlude between the songs \u201cSingle Ladies\u201d and \u201cLove on Top\u201d towards the end of her forthcoming concert film<\/span> <em><span>Homecoming<\/span><\/em><span>.&nbsp;<\/span><span>\u201cThe scene was described in the email, with Maya Angelou\u2019s voiceover going to be part of it, and yeah, I mean, I basically was just like, of course, like what the fuck?\u2019\u201d says the singer-songwriter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Then came the waiting. Neither Sprague nor her record label or publishing company had received confirmation that Florist\u2019s song \u201cThank You\u201d would actually end up in the film before it came out. But on the morning of the film\u2019s release, there it was, making it easily the most surprising and obscure song to be credited in the sprawling, two-plus hour Beyonc\u00e9 concert documentary.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" type=\"text\/html\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JKouNZOkD5o?version=3&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com&amp;rel=1&amp;fs=1&amp;autohide=2&amp;showsearch=0&amp;showinfo=1&amp;iv_load_policy=1&amp;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\">[embedded content]<\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>In the film, Florist\u2019s song arrives at an emotional highpoint, with snippets of a 2013 Maya Angelou interview appearing right after Beyonc\u00e9 narrates her own mission statement for the film. \u201cWhat I really want to do is be a representative of my race, of the human race,\u201d Angelou says, over Sprague\u2019s light looping pedals and synths. \u201cI know that when I\u2019m finished doing what I\u2019m sent here to do, I will be called home.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\" readability=\"12.544943820225\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\" xml:lang=\"en\">this film \/ performance is beyond beauty, beyond words. being a part of it in this small way with a piece of music that i made in maybe my most broken state, reaching for feeling and the intention of empathy for the world, is truly the greatest honor of my short life. thank u bey <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/B7L4p7DtoF\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/t.co\/B7L4p7DtoF<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 mle (florist) (@emyspraguemusic) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/emyspraguemusic\/status\/1118559805873033216?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">April 17, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span>Sprague had a full day of traveling planned for the film\u2019s surprise release, and when she caught up with<\/span> <em><span>Rolling Stone,<\/span><\/em> <span>she was in the midst of watching<\/span> <em><span>Homecoming<\/span><\/em> <span>from the beginning and had not yet even seen the scene in which her song appears.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In its original version, \u201cThank You\u201d includes a spoken word monologue from Sprague, who wrote the song five years ago while recovering from a bicycle accident that had left her largely immobilized. She was 20 years old and living at her first home in Brooklyn. \u201cI started making these loops on a pedal because I couldn\u2019t play any instruments, because I could only use one hand,\u201d she says. \u201cThere was no record label. I didn\u2019t even know I was making an album.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Hours after the film\u2019s release, Sprague still can\u2019t quite believe \u201cThank You\u201d has ended up in a Beyonc\u00e9 film. \u201cI have no words to describe how honored and grateful I am,\u201d she says. \u201cThis film is like the 21st-century woman made wonder of the world. It\u2019s truly the most profound work of art, and I can\u2019t believe something that I made is incorporated into it. I\u2019m in disbelief.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/beyonce-florist-homecoming-823504\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About two months ago, Emily Sprague, the singer-songwriter behind the New York-based indie collective Florist, received an email from her publishing company with the subject line \u201c\u2018Thank You\u2019 for Confidential Project.\u2019\u201d When Sprague opened the email, she was shocked. \u201cI started reading and saw Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s name, and I was just like, wait a minute, what?\u2019\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-484822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 13:43:50","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}