Getting to Know H.E.R.

The artist is halfway to an EGOT, but she’s still a mystery to young audiences. You have to see her live to understand her.

- By Meaghan Garvey

OVER THE COURSE OF, SAY, FOUR MINUTES, I witness Gabi Wilson hop from a Rhodes piano stacked on its suitcase to a synth across the studio, on which she begins banging out the riff from Coldplay’s “Clocks,” before moving to a drum kit, whaling on the thing without mercy. Her grin gets wider as she builds momentum, curls flying as she headbangs. Maybe it’s because this is the first bit of live music I’ve seen in 17 months, or because Wilson—better known as H.E.R.—is about to rehearse for her first IRL set in the same time frame, or because we’re due for a reappraisal of midcareer Coldplay as part of the latest resurgence of all things early aughts. Whatever the case, this shit unequivocally slaps.

Wilson runs through this “Clocks” routine four or five ecstatic times until she is gently reminded by a band member that it’s time to start the actual rehearsal for their two-night Hollywood Bowl takeover alongside the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which kicks off in 48 hours. She is tinier than I had expected and presidential in manner, pacing the makeshift stage in mint-green sneakers that match her billowy, custom Louis Vuitton button-down, which is outfitted, I notice upon examination, with a functional built-in backpack. The same bandmate turns to me, smiling. “You see how she is?” he said. “She’ll keep going all night if you let her.” He gathers the band for a prerehearsal prayer: “Amen … We’re gonna have a hell of a show!” “Heck of a show,” Wilson counters. “You can’t pray and then say ‘hell of a show’!”