Own Every Scar Takes Nardia to Royal Studios, the Memphis Room Where Al Green Cut His Hits

Four Memphis Horn Players Join a Blues-Trained Singer on an R&B Song About Resilience

Four horns play on Own Every Scar, the title track of Nardia‘s album: trumpet, tenor saxophone, trombone and baritone saxophone. The Grammy-winning Boo Mitchell produced them at Royal Studios in Memphis and mixed the song. Nardia, an Australian R&B singer-songwriter now based in Los Angeles, United States, released the album on 18 September 2026. The song is about resilience, and its horns tie her to one of the oldest soul lineages in American music.

Nardia styles her name N A R D I A on Instagram. Her title track is in the playlist below, and our coverage of her releases is collected on the N A R D I A profile. Own Every Scar reached this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Play it first, then read on for the room its horns came from.

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Royal Studios Still Supplies Memphis Horns, and Own Every Scar Joins a Line That Runs From Al Green

The lineage starts with a building. Royal Studios opened in 1956 inside a former Memphis cinema, as the working studio of Hi Records. From 1970 it ran under Willie Mitchell, who had joined the label as a recording artist and producer. Mitchell offered Al Green a deal in 1968. The pair then made seven gold singles in a row from 1970. The albums Let’s Stay Together (1971) and I’m Still in Love With You (1972) came out of that run.

Those records made the room’s name, and the Mitchell family still runs it, with Boo Mitchell as its manager and engineer. Royal has also kept drawing records from far outside the city. Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars recorded part of Uptown Funk there in 2014.

Two of Nardia’s Four Royal Horn Players Come From The Bo-Keys, a Band Built on Memphis Soul

Still, the players matter as much as the room. The four horn players on Own Every Scar are working Memphis musicians. Marc Franklin plays trumpet, Lannie McMillan tenor saxophone, Kameron Whalum trombone and Kirk Smothers baritone saxophone.

Franklin and Smothers also play in The Bo-Keys. Scott Bomar put that band together in 1998 from Memphis veterans, as an updated take on the city’s classic sound. Its line-up has included Howard Grimes, the drummer from Hi Records’ house band. Its horn section has also recorded and performed with Al Green himself. So the lineage on this record is carried by people as well as by an address.

Nardia Came Up Through Blues Rooms, and Own Every Scar Puts That Training Inside an R&B Song

Nardia’s own route to Memphis ran through the blues. In 2025 she made the final five at the International Blues Challenge, held in Memphis. She was the only woman in those finals, from a field of more than 400 acts. In Australia she fronts Rambal, whose album topped the Australian Blues & Roots chart and won a Chain Award. She also leads a tribute show to Etta James and B.B. King.

Own Every Scar turns that training toward R&B. Its first single, Is It You, topped an independent R&B and soul chart in the United States. Nardia made the album across Melbourne, Nashville, Memphis and Los Angeles, so the Memphis session is one stop of four. Two of its songs carry the Royal horn section, the title song itself and Feeling Good. SoulTracks and The Hype Magazine both covered the album when it came out in September.

Nardia, credited as Nardia Brancatisano, wrote Own Every Scar with Darin James, who produced it and plays the drums. Kerry Greene is on piano, while Alex Kremer and Mat Robb play acoustic and electric guitar. Rob Cureton holds the bass line, so a full band sits under the four horns.

Nardia sings it with a blues singer’s grain and an R&B vocalist’s control, which the subject needs. Its argument is in the title: the scars are the parts of a life most people would rather hide. The song argues for claiming them as part of the story instead.

Al Green, Etta James and Amy Winehouse Mark Out the Shelf Where Nardia’s Own Every Scar Belongs

So where does it sit? Own Every Scar belongs at the warm, late-night end of R&B, nearer classic soul than a blues revival set. Three artists mark out that shelf.

Al Green comes first, for the subject as much as the room. Let’s Stay Together turned a plea to hold on through good times and bad into a hit. Own Every Scar makes the same kind of case for holding on to your own history.

Etta James, meanwhile, is the model for the crossing. Across her Chess years, from At Last in 1960, she moved between blues, R&B and soul without settling on one. Own Every Scar works inside that same three-way pull, as an R&B song with the blues at its root.

Amy Winehouse gave the modern version of this pairing its best-known form. On Back to Black in 2006, Mark Ronson set her songs against the Dap-Kings and their horn section. Own Every Scar makes a similar match between a singer’s own song and a working Memphis horn section.

That match is also the point of the record. A song about keeping the marks of the past gets horns whose own past runs back through Royal. Nardia sings in front of them as someone who earned her place on the blues circuit first.

BlackSounds.News curator team: “A Memphis horn section with a baritone saxophone at the bottom is rare on an R&B record made in 2026. It is the first thing we would point a new listener to on Own Every Scar.”

Stream the album on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Tidal and Bandcamp, or save it on your preferred platform. Follow Nardia across platforms: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, her YouTube channel, her official website and Linktree.

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