Unfiltered: How Blues and Jazz Built Agrona O'Conner's Song About the Masks We Wear
A Leicester Covers Singer Turned Songwriter Takes Etta James and Aretha Franklin Into Jazz
Two of the singers Agrona O’Conner counts as influences once recorded in the same small studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. In 1967 Aretha Franklin and Etta James each cut a defining blues and soul record at FAME Studios. The line from those sessions runs all the way to Unfiltered, a jazz-leaning single from Leicester.
Agrona O’Conner’s Unfiltered is in the playlist below, and the Agrona O’Conner profile holds every feature our titles have written about the artist. The single reached this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news titles. Give it a spin first, then keep reading for the Muscle Shoals sessions behind it.
Etta James, Aretha Franklin and the Muscle Shoals Sessions Behind Agrona O’Conner’s Unfiltered
Aretha Franklin arrived at FAME Studios on 24 January 1967 with the producer Jerry Wexler. That day she recorded I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You). Then a fight broke out between her husband, Ted White, and the trumpet player Ken Laxton. The session ended early. Wexler finished the album in Atlantic’s New York studio, with members of the Muscle Shoals rhythm section flown in. The single reached No. 1 on the R&B chart and No. 9 on the Hot 100. It was the first big hit of her career.
Etta James came to the same studio later that year to record Tell Mama with the producer Rick Hall. Its B-side, I’d Rather Go Blind, began on a prison visit. Her friend Ellington Jordan outlined the song to her while he was inside. She finished it with him and, by her own account, gave her writing credit to Billy Foster for tax reasons.
Those two sessions set a template that soul and blues singers still work from. A voice sits out front, the band knows when to hold back, and the song tells the truth about love.
Agrona O’Conner Took Unfiltered From Blues Rock Covers to a Jazz Arrangement in Leicester
Agrona O’Conner is based in Leicester. Until 2024 she sang blues and rock covers. She has said she never imagined she could write her own songs. Her first single, Changes, arrived in August 2024 as a soulful blues number. A second single, I See Red, followed, and Unfiltered came out on 29 October 2024.
She wrote the lyrics and composed Unfiltered with Fabio Gobbi, who also produced it in the studio. She is credited as the arranger and produced her own vocals. Joseph Kearns recorded and mastered the track at HQ Studios in Leicester.
The jazz arrangement was a deliberate turn. Blues and rock are her natural home, but she wanted to sing a jazz song. She has explained that jazz suited the theme because it is imperfect, improvised and free of boundaries.
On record, the arrangement rests on piano. Light percussion and a bass line sit underneath, and strings swell in now and then. The groove swings in a way the blues rock covers never needed to. Her voice moves between a hush and full power. That is where the comparison with Etta James earns its keep.
What Unfiltered Says About Being Seen
Unfiltered is about the masks people wear, one face at home and another at work. It is also about how others see us through their own past. They judge a person by someone else they once knew. The question at its centre is simple: would you still love me unfiltered, with both of our filters off?
That question sits comfortably in the lineage. Franklin’s 1967 hit is about loving a man she knows is a liar and a cheat. James, meanwhile, would rather go blind than watch a lover walk away. Both are songs about what you see in someone and what you choose to love anyway. O’Conner asks the same thing for a world of make-up and phone filters. She answers it with a band that swings.
On BlackSounds.News, Unfiltered now sits in our Contemporary R&B, Neo Soul and Alt R&B playlist. It suits listeners who know the 1967 Muscle Shoals records by heart. They will want to hear where a new singer takes that sound.
From the BlackSounds.News curator team: “Agrona O’Conner says she would love to tour the world with a big band one day. On Unfiltered she already sounds ready for one, and that is why it went into our R&B playlist.”
Listen to Unfiltered on SoundCloud, then follow Agrona O’Conner across platforms: Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, YouTube channel, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, X and Linktree.
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