Melody Gardot was surrounded by music from the start and she grew up singing songs with her mother while riding in the car and taking piano lessons. By her teenage years, Gardot began to perform around Philadelphia, even as her studies led her more towards art and fashion. Then at the age of 19, while riding her bicycle on a city street, she was hit by a car making an illegal turn. The tragic event changed the course of her life.
The resulting head and pelvic injuries led to two years of an exceedingly slow and painful recovery process. Gardot had to recover memories and reestablish motor and communication skills. While still in her hospital bed, she wrote and recorded songs that would become her first recording, the 2005 EP Some Lessons: The Bedroom Sessions.
Gardot’s breakthrough came in 2009 with My One and Only Thrill, which peaked at number two on Billboard’s U.S. Jazz Albums chart and eventually sold 1.5 million copies worldwide.
Three years later, in 2012, she released The Absence, which debuted at the top of Billboard’s Jazz LP chart. Currency of Man followed in 2015, with Gardot’s voice developing a stronger, more robust edge and a musical direction that furthered her exploration of using recording techniques to creatively craft songs for modern ears, strongly influenced by R&B, blues and traces of modern pop.
Looking back at two decades of personal progress, musical ascendancy and stunning consistency all points to the idea of an artist of lasting power who has many chapters left to write in her story.