'This is a woman who made me who I am': Dragonette on 5 songs that changed her life
Martina Sorbara, a.k.a. Dragonette, reflects on the music that influenced her life as a performer
What music influenced the sounds and songwriting of Toronto electro-pop project Dragonette? When CBC Music asked Martina Sorbara, the artist behind the moniker, that question when she joined us in studio, she said that she'd recently realized Ani DiFranco's work tops that list: "This is a woman who made me who I am."
Sorbara released Twennies, a collection of sticky dance-pop tracks, in October after a six-year hiatus from the spotlight, outside of a few collaborations. Twennies is her first album as a solo artist, and Sorbara admitted to CBC Music that at one point she wondered if she'd ever make music again. "What even is Dragonette?" she remembers asking herself.
Reconnecting with some of the influences that originally led her to a life of performance helped Sorbara find her way back to music-making. "Kate Bush is one of the people that just blew my mind as a songwriter," Sorbara said, reflecting on the 1989 song "Deeper Understanding" and its lyrics:
As the people here grow colder
I turn to my computer
And spend my evenings with it
Like a friend
"In the '80s?! No! And now it's like, that song speaks so loudly to exactly everybody's experience of the world."
From Sinead O'Connor's powerful "Fire on Babylon" to Martika's "Love… Thy Will Be Done," get to know some of Sorbara's favourite songs in the video above.