Singers with Unique Voices: Ryley Tate Wilson (The Unique Voices Club #34)

Every Friday, I write a post about singers with unique voices not commonly heard in mainstream music in an effort to educate emerging artists and music lovers and inspire them to embrace their own quirks. This week I'm writing on Ryley Tate Wilson.

Photo by Trae Patton for NBC

It's been about a year since Ryley Tate Wilson got another surge of awareness from appearing on national television with his younger brother Reid on The Jennifer Hudson Show after he was just on The Voice as a brace-faced 15-year-old. It's likely you remember him. I'm writing him into the Unique Voices Club this week because I found out that he was going to be playing at the Middle East (which is in my city) last Sunday, and tickets were already sold out by the time I learned of this😢. Oh well. I don't feel super bad because a gnarly throat infection meant I wouldn't be able to go anyway. And he's going to school at Berklee. Maybe I'll catch him at the Red Room or something and he sells more tickets than when I saw Thunderstorm Artis there last summer.

Ryley just has a handful of singles right now, including a collab with his brother Reid, which was my obsession for the earlier half of this year. Opening for Niall Horan on a bunch of tour dates led to a short-lived record deal with major label Capitol Records and only spawned one single. Now signed to the same indie label that has Leslie Odom Jr. and Andy Grammer signed to it, his most recent single is this 80s-influenced electropop jam called "Party Girl." The music video was fun to watch, but personally I like his folky acoustic stuff better. The beauty of starting young (and working with an indie label) is that you can evolve and experiment as much as you wish.

We all know how much young artists are lauded on televised singing competitions and the like. I spent a summer mentoring young musicians at the School of Rock one summer when I was in college and these kids had more confidence performing on stage than I did. We need to nurture that in our schools when it comes to heavily creative kids like Ryley and Reid. Clearly the Wilson parents are doing something right if three out of their five kids make music and Ryley has been producing stuff since he was eleven. Eleven. I wrote my first song whatsoever when I was eleven, and I still use GarageBand (don't judge me).

Ryley Tate's voice has been compared to James Blunt kind of, more so in his falsetto than in his regular voice. It can get husky at times. For someone who was still actively going through voice changes when he first appeared on national television, he had and still has a surprising amount of range and more vocal control than he lets on. The uniqueness in his diction likely comes from having to sing over braces, but he honestly makes it look easy with a tone that can lull you to sleep. He told better that he would love to be in musical theatre (he performed with a ton of theatre troupes growing up), and as someone in that realm, I would definitely write him into something. There aren't a lot of unique voices in musical theatre.

Like I said earlier, unless you live under a rock or just don't follow things that go viral and whatnot, there is a chance you've already heard of Ryley Tate Wilson. He isn't a household name anyhow, but if you believe in investing in the work of young artists, go ahead and follow him and see more of what he's up to. Especially if you're very young and need the confidence. Here's a guy still in his teens doing it.

And that is all for the Unique Voices Club this week, firebirds! Friendly reminder that if you want to suggest artists for me to write about in the future, then subscribe to my Patreon! And I'll shout you out here and on social media. Your own voice will be heard.

Stay eduated,

Alexia