Lake Street Dive

The deepest root in Rachael Price's vocal tree. Price spent ages five to fifteen exclusively listening to Ella Fitzgerald and learning her performances note for note — a decade of total immersion before she ever considered singing anything else. Fitzgerald's harmonic phrasing, scat-derived melodic instinct, pinpoint pitch control, and the ability to swing a lyric without sacrificing its emotional clarity are the foundation of Price's entire approach. When critics reach for comparisons to describe Price's voice, Fitzgerald is almost always the first name they land on. The connection runs so deep that when Price began her Vilray jazz duo project, she and Vilray essentially wrote songs with Fitzgerald's voice as the target template.

"From ages five to 15, all I did was listen to Ella and learn her performances, note for note."

Tony Scherman Substack ↗

Not an influence so much as a founding document. Drummer Mike Calabrese put it plainly in a Guardian interview: 'We want it to sound like the Beatles and Motown had a party together.' Motown's sonic signature — tight, punchy rhythm sections, call-and-response vocal arrangements, perfectly engineered pop song structures with gospel fire underneath — is structurally embedded in Lake Street Dive's entire aesthetic. The band came out of New England Conservatory with jazz training but consciously applied that technique to Motown's emotional directness and danceability. Their breakout cover of the Jackson 5's 'I Want You Back' was the moment listeners heard this equation and couldn't unhear it.

"We want it to sound like the Beatles and Motown had a party together."

The Guardian ↗

The other half of Calabrese's famous equation. The Beatles' influence on Lake Street Dive operates on a structural and philosophical level: the idea that a small band could contain enormous harmonic ambition, that pop songwriting could carry genuine emotional and musical complexity, and that vocal interplay between multiple strong voices was the engine of great pop. Like the Beatles, Lake Street Dive layer their personalities into ensemble arrangements where no single element dominates for long. Their genre-blurring — folk, soul, jazz, pop, rock coexisting in single songs — mirrors the Beatles' own restless eclecticism. The band formed at New England Conservatory explicitly to build a pop band with the harmonic richness of jazz.

"We want it to sound like the Beatles and Motown had a party together."

The Guardian ↗

Paste Magazine's review of Bad Self Portraits observed Rachael Price 'effortlessly channeling matriarchs like Etta James and even Big Mama Thornton' — a critical identification of Price's most visceral vocal register. James's ability to pivot between buttery sweetness and raw, tearing gospel power is the template for Price's dynamic range. On Lake Street Dive tracks like 'You Go Down Smooth' and 'Just Ask,' the ghost of James's Atlantic-era recordings is palpable — the same combination of technical control and apparent emotional abandon that makes soul singing feel dangerous.

Paste Magazine ↗

Rachael Price names Aretha Franklin as a direct influence, adding the self-deprecating caveat: 'How can you really be influenced by someone whom nobody can sing like?' — a statement that says everything about Franklin's stature in Price's imagination. The call-and-response vocal interplay on tracks like 'Seventeen' and 'Stop Your Crying' mirrors Franklin's gospel-derived ensemble technique. More broadly, Franklin's model of a woman with total command — of an audience, a band, a room — is the archetype Price consciously or unconsciously inhabits every time Lake Street Dive takes a stage.

"How can you really be influenced by someone whom nobody can sing like?"

Tony Scherman Substack ↗

The Jackson 5 sit at the precise intersection of Motown craft and exuberant pop energy that Lake Street Dive orbits. The band's viral breakthrough — a slow, swinging cover of 'I Want You Back' filmed on the street — exposed exactly how deep this influence ran. It went from thousands to millions of views overnight, with Kevin Bacon tweeting about it. The cover wasn't ironic or academic; it was joyful, full-commitment, lived-in. The Jackson 5's model of harmonically sophisticated pop delivered with maximum physical excitement is the direct template for what Lake Street Dive does on a stage.

Paste Magazine ↗

Rachael Price cites Sam Cooke as a direct vocal inspiration. Cooke invented the template that Lake Street Dive inhabits: the artist who moves between gospel heat and pop elegance without losing either, who makes technical mastery feel effortless and spiritual feeling feel precise. Price's ability to shift registers within a single phrase — from an intimate, almost spoken intimacy to a full-throated soul cry — is Cooke's original move, applied sixty years later through a jazz-conservatory filter.

Tony Scherman Substack ↗

Rachael Price names Stevie Wonder as a direct influence. Wonder's classic 1970s run — from Talking Book through Songs in the Key of Life — established the model of an artist who refuses any border between Motown pop, jazz harmony, soul balladry, and social consciousness, all delivered with a voice capable of total emotional specificity. This refusal of genre borders, the insistence that sophisticated harmony belongs inside a pop song, and the belief that accessible music can carry genuine depth are the core values Lake Street Dive have carried from New England Conservatory into their entire catalog.

Tony Scherman Substack ↗

Alongside Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday was the canonical figure Rachael Price studied at the Nashville Jazz Workshop as a teenager, learning approximately 300 standards. Holiday's behind-the-beat, emotionally exposed phrasing — treating every syllable as a micro-drama — is one pole of Price's vocal identity, the jazz pole that she deploys when Lake Street Dive slows down and breathes. The influence is most explicitly heard in Price's Vilray duo project, which Vilray described as writing specifically for 'Billie Holiday's voice and style.'

Rachael Price — Wikipedia ↗

NPR's Fresh Air review flagged Lake Street Dive covering 'Dedicated to the One I Love' in the Mamas and the Papas version, reading it as a precise stylistic self-identification. The Mamas and the Papas' model — jazz-literate voices stacked into lush pop harmonies, sunshine-pop warmth that carries genuine melancholy underneath — maps directly onto Lake Street Dive's ensemble approach. Both bands prove that vocal harmony can be the primary compositional tool, melody and counterpoint doing the structural work that a guitar or horn section might do elsewhere.

NPR Music / Fresh Air ↗