Gregory Porter

Person / b. 1971 / United States

jazz blues contemporary jazz gospel neo soul vocal jazz easy listening soul

Biography

Gregory Porter is an American singer, songwriter, and musician. He has twice won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album: first in 2014 for Liquid Spirit and then again in 2017 for Take Me to the Alley.

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Elsewhere

Analysed songs (10)

Be Good (Lion's Song)

Gregory Porter

Gregory Porter builds an extended allegory of romantic self-diminishment around the image of a caged lion taming itself for a…

self-suppression for love power and taming unrequited or unequal affection

Concorde

Gregory Porter

Gregory Porter turns a supersonic flight home into a meditation on gravity, both literal and emotional. The song tracks a…

longing for home love as gravitational force cosmic scale vs. human intimacy

Everything You Touch Is Gold

Gregory Porter

A buoyant love song built around the Midas-touch conceit, in which the singer casts himself as transformed by a lover's presence…

romantic transformation gratitude and abundance innocence regained

Heaven

Gregory Porter

A soft, devotional love song that treats a romantic partner as a near-mythical arrival — someone who seems to have literally…

romantic wonder divinity/transcendence in love healing through love

Holding On

Gregory Porter

A meditation on a love the narrator can't will himself out of, even when guilt, fatigue, and a bruised past argue for release.…

involuntary devotion emotional exhaustion guilt and self-reproach

Insanity

Gregory Porter

A plea for reconciliation built around a simple, repeated question: how did two people who loved each other let things unravel…

reconciliation the thin line between love and anger friendship as the durable core of romance

Mister Holland

Gregory Porter

A young Black narrator recalls being welcomed into a white family's home to court their daughter, and the song turns that memory…

race and acceptance interracial courtship childhood innocence vs. adult awareness

On My Way to Harlem

Gregory Porter

Gregory Porter narrates a pilgrimage to Harlem that turns into a meditation on cultural inheritance and gentrification—the icons…

cultural memory gentrification and displacement artistic lineage

Painted on Canvas

Gregory Porter

Gregory Porter builds an extended metaphor comparing human identity to a painted canvas, where upbringing, community, and chance…

identity formation agency vs. determinism artistic lineage

Take Me to the Alley

Gregory Porter

A gospel-inflected ballad that imagines a king or messiah figure rejecting the pomp prepared for his arrival in favor of the…

religious allegory compassion for the marginalized critique of materialism