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Vivian Green VibeZ

Thirteen tracks from a Philadelphia singer who arrived with one of the best debut singles of the 2000s and has been quietly excellent ever since.

Vivian Green

Vivian Green is from Philadelphia and came up the traditional way — church, then a girl group, then backing vocals for Jill Scott, then songwriting. She wrote for Boyz II Men before she released anything of her own.

Her 2002 debut A Love Story arrived at the height of the neo-soul wave and stood out for two reasons: she is a genuinely capable pianist who writes at the instrument, and her songs deal with the unglamorous middle of relationships rather than their beginnings or ends.

She has since released steadily, largely outside the major-label system, and her more recent work is arguably stronger than the early records that made her name.

What to listen for

"Emotional Rollercoaster" is the record everyone knows — a Grammy-nominated single and one of the most durable R&B songs of its decade. The lyric is doing something unusual: it describes an ongoing, unresolved, exhausting relationship rather than a decisive moment.

"Fanatic" is the other early single and the harder-edged one.

"Cursed" and "Anything Out There" come from her later independent work and are among the best writing here — more direct, less concerned with radio.

"Sweet Memory (Beautifully Young)" is a James Poyser production and one of the loveliest things in her catalogue.

"Get Right Back To My Baby" and "Leave It All Behind" show the range, and "Forever" is the ballad.

The collaborations are worth noting for what they say about her standing among musicians: Guru on "Fine And Free" from the Jazzmatazz series, Ghostface Killah on "Light Up," Raheem DeVaughn on "All I Want Is You," and Freeway — a Philadelphia rapper — on "X."

Go deeper

A Love Story (2002) is the debut, and Vivid (2005) is the follow-up. VGVI (2015) and after are the independent records.

For the Philadelphia neo-soul world she belongs to: Jill Scott, Musiq Soulchild, Bilal, Floetry, Kindred The Family Soul and Jaguar Wright. It was, for about five years, the most productive soul scene in America.

And for singer-pianists in soul, Alicia Keys is the obvious comparison, but Roberta Flack and Nina Simone are the real models — artists whose harmonic choices came from their own hands.

One more observation. Vivian Green writes at the piano, and it shows in the songs: the melodies move in ways a topline writer working over a finished beat would not choose, and the chord changes carry the emotional turns rather than the lyrics doing all the work. That is increasingly rare in R&B and it is the main reason her later independent records hold up better than a lot of what surrounded her at the start.

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