Some girls are natural performers and shine from the get-go. From show choir to drama class, pageants and cheerleading, they are born to be in front of an audience.
Only a handful of them, however, shine bright enough to grow up to become stars. Oklahoma City native Aisha Eustache is a rising star who has taken her gifts all the way from those numerous childhood performances to the Big Apple to show the music world what she can do with her beautiful voice.
With vocals as smooth as velvet, her style captures the simple elegance and sophistication of influences such as Sade and Ella Fitzgerald with Motown and R&B undertones.
Eustache’s debut EP, Love & Addiction, explores the humanity in emotions, touching on romantic, loyal love, as well as the darker side of human nature and addictive tendencies.
Eustache wrote all of the songs on the EP and says that she draws inspiration from everyday moments.
“Moments in the valley reflecting on losing my grandfather or making songs up in my kitchen while I cook. Moments looking at two or three stars in the NYC sky while longing for the simplicity and beauty of Oklahoma. My lead single, ‘Faithful,’ is really close to my heart. I wrote the song last fall for my guy in our home. It was a really beautiful moment of fulfillment, and I am thankful it could be memorialized in song,” she says.
“Falling in and out and finally staying in love has really shaped me as a woman and shapes my lyrics. Spirituality, life lessons and experiences (have all influenced me)… how Oklahoma is so innocent and peaceful in one moment, yet how fierce she is when tornadoes are unleashed to dance across the plains… NYC, with its enlivening energy and dichotomous socioeconomic and multicultural structure… It’s all in the lyrics, the emotional space and the melody.”
After years of writing music, performing and traveling around the country with different musicians and producers, Eustache moved to NYC with $500 to her name nine years ago and has since stretched herself as an artist.
She says that her ear for music has grown leaps and bounds with Love & Addiction, and that her understanding of production, engineering and layers of recording has expanded.
“It hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows. There are challenges, but nothing that isn’t for my own growth and pruning. When I stopped telling myself how impossible this was and started putting one foot in front of the other each day, things started happening. I just had to leap,” Eustache says.
“We all experience adversity in some way or another. Fear of failure, fear of happiness, fear of reaching our full potential, fear of not being good enough… fear has been my biggest adversity and challenge on this journey. I haven’t mastered it yet, but my faith, family and friends love me through the fear and help me navigate the waves.”
