Diana Gordon’s Story Is Bigger Than “Becky with the Good Hair”

From Harper's BAZAAR

Diana Gordon makes a request before we end our nearly hour-long interview. “Can I ask you something?” she asks softly. “When you do write this article, can you not use anything from Wikipedia?” The singer-songwriter goes on to explain that journalists often incorrectly say she “wears many hats” or “came from a troubled childhood,” even after interviewing her.

When I ask what else the internet got wrong about her, she scrolls down the page and lists corrections from behind her manager’s laptop screen: her middle name isn’t Paris, she didn’t get her start singing on church corners, and she’s never been in a band called The Righteous Young. (Though she did once release a song under that stage name.)

There’s more to Diana Gordon than what fans have written on the web. And there's more to her than her biggest claim to fame, penning and producing “Becky with the good hair,” AKA “Sorry” on Beyoncé’s Lemonade. Gordon also co-wrote the country-inspired “Daddy Lessons” and Jack White collaboration “Don’t Hurt Yourself” on the Grammy-nominated 2016 album.

But Gordon steps out from the shadows and shapes her narrative with her new EP, Pure, which released earlier this month. After years of writing for other artists and releasing music as the EDM act Wynter Gordon, this marks her first EP under her real name, following only two singles dropped in 2016: “Legend Of,” a powerful intro to her second act, and “Woman,” a gritty female anthem. Pure is a personal manifesto filled with tributes to her family and childhood that reflects her eclectic palate of musical influences, from gospel to country.

“I wanted to start a conversation just so [my listeners] could know the real me, because a lot of times artists will put out a song and it's just about the song. And if they don't have another good song, you don't know much about them. There’s nothing to hold onto,” Gordon explains to BAZAAR.com. “You can't form a relationship. I think I made a body of work that was so personal about my childhood that would just force us to talk.”

Gordon, who grew up as one of six kids in Queens, includes intimate family themes in Pure. Finding her older brother David, who’d been missing for 16 years, was a major influence on the project. So was raising her younger brother Chris (“Kool Aid”), her father's absence (“Thank You”), and her mother’s having children at a young age (“Too Young"). Gordon and her siblings were tight-knit; her sister was her “built-in best friend.” Though she was the middle child, Diana is still acts as Big Sis and"crisis manager," she jokes.

Diana actually completed Pure two years ago and the project sat on her computer ever since, due to management switch-ups, bad timing, and being a perfectionist, she recalls. But now, she's on a roll. She’s already working on another project slated to release in January. Plus, Dev Hynes is using her voice for the upcoming Blood Orange album. She also worked on a song with Mark Ronson and Diplo (known together as Silk City), Florence Welch, The xx’s Romy Madley Croft, and Dua Lipa.

In addition to her family and her story, Gordon also dedicates Pure to kids who've suffered poverty and abuse. It's "for the kids who have found one thing in their life that they can hold onto, that they can call proudly theirs, and it's saving them," she explains. "I felt it would be really selfish if I didn't share my story with them."

Here, Gordon tells BAZAAR.com about her beginnings, her family, and what she learned from Beyoncé.

Gordon went to Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, a performing arts school, and started writing music when she was 15.

Music saved me. A lot of people are just like, "I did it for fun.' Yeah, it was fun, but I realized early on it was something that set me apart because I didn't feel special. I didn't feel pretty. I felt like a little tomboy, I had acne, I just wasn't, "It." Music made me feel like I had a chance. So, I ran with it.

I started writing my own songs and really hustle-and-flow-ing it. I had a few jobs. I was working at a nightclub, I was a waitress, I worked at Bally Total Fitness, I was a supermarket cashier girl, up until the point that I landed on a Mary J. Blige album, and from there, got my first record deal.

Working with Mary J. was when I could stop working nine-to-five jobs that were in food service. It was a freedom moment because I had the opportunity to do a job that hones the skills that I want to do for my passion, which is performing. Songwriting was the means to the end.

Before releasing music under her own name in 2016, Gordon gained a following as an EDM act, Wynter Gordon. (She still gets over 270,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. You’ve probably heard her 2010 hit “Dirty Talk” on a night out.) But it didn’t feel genuine. “To be honest with you, it wasn't me,” she says.

I was traveling the world with Skrillex and deadmau5, and we'd be in Australia and see a sea of ten thousand people in the crowd and they can't hear you. It’s not personal. I like to be very personal. Sometimes the sound systems were bad and I'd be screaming, I'd lose my voice pretty much every day.

The culture of nightlife is different. It's like, drugs, alcohol; that's the lifestyle and I saw that a lot. I'm pretty all the way straight-edge, I don't drink, and I like to go to bed with a good book, maybe Netflix and chill. I'm a cozy person. And that was not it.

It also felt like I didn't earn the applause. In those EDM crowds, a lot of the time, it's a lot of tricks. You do a trick, they scream for you. I felt it was dishonest. I just didn't want to do it anymore. But my fans as Wynter Gordon wanted that from me. I think I just didn't want to disappoint them. So, I just changed my name and said, "Well, I might have to start over. These are going to be all new fans, but at least I'll be earning it."

“Kool Aid” is about her brother Chris, who’s nine years younger than she is. He’s the youngest of six, including Diana.

I raised him. I mean, parent-teacher conferences. I remember my mom came home from the hospital when he was born. She came in the house and she just put him in my arms and said, "You know what to do." And she went to bed. He was like my little doll and we did everything. He was so sweet. Chris was just a good kid. He would come to the studio with me, he'd be 12 years old, sleeping on the floor at 3 a.m., 'cause these were the days that I really went hard. That song is just about our relationship and how much I treasure him.

In January 2017, Gordon and her family found her brother David, who’s eight years older than she is, after he’d been missing for 16 years. He was homeless and schizophrenic, living on the streets, she explains. Finding him was only half the battle.

I wondered why God let me find my brother. Because when I found him he wasn't my brother anymore. He was a stranger, he was very unresponsive to me, he was gone. He had so much trauma. I felt like I was meant to find him to figure out that it wasn't my fault, and that there was nothing I could do. I couldn't save him. 'Cause I spent 16 years wondering, "If only I had ... Maybe I could have saved him," and, "If he's alive I want to show him that I'm here. That I've made it. I can help now." 'Cause I wasn't able to help when I was younger. It really hurt.

So, when I did find him like that, I realized everyone has their own struggle in life, regardless if they're your siblings or not, everyone is their own person and they have to handle it. It's them, and God, and the universe. That's what I realized, I can only take care of me. I can do what I can and I have to have peace in that.

Her father was in the music business and used to work with Michael Jackson.

I have one picture of my birth father at Studio 54 with Michael, and Lionel Richie, and Beverly Johnson, but I didn't grow up with him. He's actually a fugitive. He was arrested, and then escaped for doing something really horrible, and changed his name. He couldn't sing, not to my knowledge, but his drive in music, maybe I got that from him. All my brothers and sisters sing, but no one has pursued the craft like I have.

Though Gordon's R&B influences are obvious, she has a soft spot for country music (especially Dolly Parton). She even studied everything from Italian arias to Zulu in school. But growing up, she was only allowed to listen to Christian music.

In my house, we weren't allowed to listen to music without the Lord in it. It was Jesus-driven music. We got to pick our own type of gospel that we listened to and I really loved the alternative stuff. There was this group called Jars of Clay, they were this great Christian alternative group. Their songs, even though they were singing to Jesus, it'd sound like they were singing to a girl. So, I could easily place myself in the songs, instead of Jesus.

Actually, that's been hard for me: really figuring out my voice, amongst all of my characters, amongst all of my voices and my talents. It's really hard, when you can do so many things, to pinpoint and really commit to a sound.

Working on Lemonade was a dream come true for Gordon. It also opened up doors for her, but she didn’t pursue every opportunity that was presented to her.

It was bucket list for me to work with Beyoncé 'cause she's, you know, she's Beyoncé. It's everyone's dream. If there were anybody I would love to write with still, it's Rihanna. Personally, it showed me that all my dreaming when I was a kid, was not for nothing. I used to have so many posters of Beyoncé on my wall. It was like, "Wow, you really did it. I can't believe you, congratulations." I said that to myself, briefly.

I don't celebrate things, so I don't think I even took that moment in. But, how has my life changed? I think as a songwriter, a lot of people right after that were like, 'Can you write me songs? We want a song like this, we want a song like that.' Which, I didn't do. I pretty much turned down every session that was asked of me after that because I had really no desire to just be out writing music for people, but that did happen. I did work with Mark Ronson a lot. I said yes because I really adore him. He's become a great friend.

She was upset when Lemonade didn’t win the Grammy for Album of the Year. But she didn’t get caught up in the uproar following the ceremony.

I went to my first Grammys. I was sitting there and we were all holding hands, and we just knew we were going to go up on stage because when Beyoncé wins, everybody wins. Then, they said Adele and it was like, "Okay. We love Adele but..." It was really sad. I went right home. There was a party afterwards but I went right home and just went to bed. I was just so sad.

After that moment passed, I was like, "Let me put this away." Everybody focused on the loss, but for me, it was about my life, my career, where I was gonna go, and how much a Grammy means to me as a performer and as an artist. That would have meant everything. I was like, "That made my lifetime, in the business, well worth it. I finally earned it." I was so close. And it didn't come. But it could still happen.

Gordon didn’t understand the pandemonium over “Becky with the good hair.”

That was really weird, honestly. It was like anything I would say around the time, journalists would be like, "And Beyoncé said..." I'd be like, "No, she didn't." When you work with Beyoncé, she's really, really hands on. She has her own reasons for doing things. If Becky was somebody to her, I had no idea who it was. I just thought it was funny that everybody was like, "Who is it?" like it was this personal person that we all knew about. I was just laughing.

Gordon's original meaning behind the lyric was about colorism in the black community.

To me, it was nobody. To me, when I was thinking about my song, it was Jolene from the Dolly Parton song. It was a metaphor, too. "With the good hair," just meant like you're dating a light-skinned black girl, because "good hair" is just what we say in the black community for women who have not-so-kinky hair. It's like, "Oh, she got good hair. It's curly, it's wavy." It’s just a metaphor for the lighter skin colorism thing in the black community. But I thought that was funny. I was amazed that it was on shirts, it became a thing. I was kind of proud of myself. I was like, "I really affected culture this year."

But, Beyoncé is a movement in herself. I was beyond proud to have had that experience with her. I take it with a stride, I've signed many an NDA. Our experience, I have nothing but beautiful things.

She learned from Beyoncé’s perfectionism.

I learned that I'm not wrong for being picky, from Beyoncé. Women get labeled a "bitch" when they know what they want, or they want their pictures a certain way, or they want to look a certain way, or they want to be seen a certain way. They want things done the way they like it, and when they speak up for themselves, as I have, the response has been, "You’re making poor decisions." Or, "You're not right." But I learned that all true artists, feel that way. They like it how they like it. Having a good team around is important, too. You are your team.

Listen to Diana Gordon's EP, Pure, below.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.

('You Might Also Like',)

• The Essential British Packing List

• 30 Facial Moisturizers for Every Budget

• We Cut Bangs on 16 Different Women With The Help of Celebrity Stylist Justine Marjan