EDM Star Kendra Erika Transforms James Bond Songs With "License to Thrill"

Kendra Erika Exclusive Interview

 [Speaker 1] (0:06 - 0:33)

See reflections on the water, more than darkness in the depths. See him surface and never a shadow. On the wind I feel his breath.

Go on a night, I found his weakness. Go on a night, I'll do what I please. Go on a night, no time for sweetness.

[Speaker 3] (0:33 - 1:09)

Join us for an electrifying conversation with EDM powerhouse Kendra Erica as she unveils her upcoming album license to Thrill, the James Bond songbook. From reimagining classics like GoldenEye and Skyfall with her signature electronic flair to sharing behind-the-scenes stories of Blending 007's timeless allure with modern dance beats, Kendra opens up about her Billboard chart-topping journey, creative process, and what it takes to license a Thrill. Whether you're a Bond fan or an EDM enthusiast, this episode is packed with insights, laughs, and a sneak peek into her February album release showcase.

[Speaker 2] (1:14 - 1:31)

Did you start out liking EDM and you just wanted to start doing it because it's not your typical, let's get three people together to play bass, guitar, drummer, and a keyboard player, whatever. It's got a lot of electronics in it, that's why it's called EDM, Electronic Dance Music. How did you get into that?

[Speaker 1] (1:32 - 2:59)

Well, I originally did not get into it. When I was eight years old, I was straightened out from my tone deafness by a German opera singer. He laid a foundation for me, and it was a classical foundation, and so I built upon that.

Then I was involved in community theater, school theater, and then I started just performing out in local competitions. Then when I was 15 or 16 years of age, I got a job singing at an Italian restaurant where I had to really just do a crash course and build my repertoire to appease the clientele there in Boca Raton, Florida by doing a lot of the standards and American Songbook and all those classics. I was always fascinated with the songwriting process.

My first releases were pop and dance releases, but then I started working with an artist development firm in New York later on. This was in my late teens, early 20s.

[Speaker 2] (3:00 - 3:01)

You were still young then, yeah.

[Speaker 1] (3:01 - 5:33)

Yeah, I was still young. I was around 20, 21 years old, and this was when I started to really take a liking for the likes of Lana Del Rey, Ellie Goulding, Jessie Ware, a lot of those classy, contemporary, but yet very stylish artists. During this whole process, it's really funny because working with this development firm in New York, they were actually developing me as this Bond-esque type girl with this Lana Del Rey sound.

I put out tracks such as Miami Love, Hustler, and we were about to do another song, and just the songwriters I was working with, we were just hitting a wall. Then Lynn Verlaine, the head of the firm, introduced me to Jason Dowman, who was essentially and who became my billboard promoter. She said, I think your voice would lend itself well to that style of music, that dance EDM style, that kind of falsetto, soprano.

It goes really well with DJs like Cascade, Armin van Buuren, all of those, Tiësto, all of them, that they were putting out these records with these. A lot of these European DJs too, like Gareth Emery, they were putting out all these records with all these high soprano type voices, which I had. She linked me up with him, and then because I wasn't really progressing with their writers, he just said, why don't you just come out to LA and start working with the team that I have?

The team that I started working with, like Damon Sharpe, Luigi Gonzalez, Chris Garcia, Kevin Wilde, I started working with them. From working with them, they were all very dance, pop, commercial focused. Then I started writing and recording and charting on the billboard charts with that kind of style.

Now, I'm coming back to that Bond girl.

[Speaker 2] (5:35 - 5:38)

I don't think that girl ever left.

[Speaker 1] (5:38 - 5:42)

No, she never left. She just took a little bit of a scenic route.

[Speaker 2] (5:43 - 6:25)

Did you ever think about, though, the story you just told me, that people, did it ever cross your mind, though, that people obviously saw something in you that they would go and say, hey, come up to New York, or hey, we're not done with you, let's take you to LA? I mean, they obviously, whoever was around you saw something in you that they could take in, and they saw a talent is what I'm trying to say. The typical journey is different for you because of the fact that you were in that type of music.

Actually, when you were talking about singing at an Italian restaurant, I'm thinking, I wonder how many Dean Martin songs and Frank Sinatra songs she had to sing.

[Speaker 1] (6:30 - 8:42)

What ended up happening, how I got that job, is my parents and I went to this spot called Renzo's in Boca, and it was karaoke night. Every week they did karaoke night, and I got up and I did Time to Say Goodbye by Andrea Bocelli. I was 15 at the time, because it's just so unheard of.

It's almost like, how does that come out of that young girl? Just that whole shock value. I got a standing ovation, and then Renzo comes up to my parents and I with two glasses of wine and says, I have a proposition for you.

He said, I just lost my Sunday singer because she got knocked up. And would you essentially want to take that spot? Instantly, I said yes.

Of course you did. I said yes, even before my mom was like, Kendra, say yes, say yes, kicking me under the table, say yes. I was like, mom, I got this, I know what to do.

When I got that job, it was almost like the fundamentals, that initial high was starting to wear off, and then reality started to hit in. Even my mom, she was coming down off that high and then starting to check herself with reality and say, oh, well, you got to learn all these songs now. Because all these people that are coming down here, all the retirees, they're going to want to hear some Frank and some Dean and some Adores Day and some Billie Holiday.

[Speaker 2] (8:42 - 9:18)

I forgot about Kesa Ross. Here's what I think is funny. It's like when you get to that point in your career and you were only 15.

So anytime somebody's going to say, hey, would you like to sing on Sundays? Of course you're going to say yes. But then like you said, you're going like, yeah, I could do a, oh, wait a minute, I'm not just doing a song.

I can't come in and sing Andrew Bocelli every time I come in here. I got about four hours to fill.

[Speaker 1] (9:18 - 10:24)

Yeah, I've got to fill my hours. Yeah, exactly. And I can't just come on in here and do like Spice Girls and Britney Spears because that'll get me kicked out.

All the stuff that I'm listening to. But what's really great about this is my parents had seasoned me from a young age because when I was growing up and they would have company over, they would always play the soundtracks of Celine Dion, of Barbra Streisand, of like Phantom of the Opera, all the Broadway classics. My dad would always play Frank Sinatra whenever we would be driving to dinner and from dinner or wherever we were going, he would always be playing those songs in the car.

And now looking back in hindsight, I'm thinking he did a good job at that kind of indoctrination with me because I like that.

[Speaker 2] (10:25 - 10:42)

Well, you didn't even think about it because you heard it so many times that when it came time to sing those songs, you already knew them. Because I'm sure you sit in the backseat and go like, oh my God, is he going to play that song again? Or hear it on the radio?

Dad, we can't hear that song. But then later, it actually paid off.

[Speaker 1] (10:43 - 10:58)

Yeah, it paid off. And also, it kind of just started to live within me and started to become a part of my development and a part of my absorption.

[Speaker 2] (10:59 - 11:06)

Were either one of your parents artists at all? Were they singers, performers? Did they do anything?

No, nothing?

[Speaker 1] (11:06 - 12:05)

No. Well, my mom, when she was growing up, she took ballet lessons and piano lessons. But unfortunately, with her father's situation, he unfortunately was laid off, so he couldn't afford the lessons anymore.

And also, she had an experience where her dad was just so strict and made her practice three hours a day, even putting a timer on the piano, setting a timer. So by the time she got to the big recital, she got up on stage and she completely blacked out because she had rehearsed so much. And so she blacked out and just walked off the stage because when you just run the tire so much through the mud, you literally see mud and you see black.

[Speaker 2] (12:06 - 12:30)

Well, it's kind of like parents that want their kids to be sports people. They're living their life through the kid. How did you realize that somebody saying you suck at singing?

Where did somebody say that you can't carry a note? Was it in school that somebody said, hey, get up and sing and you couldn't do it? How did they recognize that fact?

[Speaker 1] (12:31 - 13:16)

No one really said to me that I was tone deaf. It's sort of like, let's just, well, especially when it comes to my parents, let's just help her out. But let's just not tell her her diagnosis, really.

Well, because when you're and I think they did that to protect my my porcelain doll little ego, too. Because if they were to have said, you know, you're tone deaf, then I would have been absolutely crushed and then I probably would not be where I am today and doing what I'm doing. I would have been like Patrick from SpongeBob and crawled underneath a rock.

[Speaker 2] (13:17 - 13:22)

Did you say it was an opera person that taught you how to overcome it? An opera style?

[Speaker 1] (13:23 - 14:58)

Yeah, a classical coach. He was the musical director at the local theater that I went to because I wanted to get more involved in performance and theater. But because of my condition, my parents were like, OK, in order for her to actually do this properly and with an unhumiliatingly, we need to get her straightened out.

But I didn't know that I was tone deaf. I just I just had the confidence to do it. There's actually a tape of me when I when I was turning three of me singing Happy Birthday to myself.

And it was like a tonal. It was like it was like the planes of Kansas. It was like one plane.

It was like, no, no, no, no, no. Like just flat, just completely flat, like nothing, no rocky, no undulation, nothing. So I retroactively looking at that, I'm like, yeah, there is something askew there.

But then the classical coach and being that I was eight years old, I was still super duper young. I was I was very I was very amenable to the training and I and I soaked it up like a like a sponge. So that's why they say it's better to learn a language when you're younger versus when you're older.

[Speaker 2] (14:59 - 15:10)

That's true. And if you're young and you'll learn it, you're better off. It's because when I was in high, that's when they taught you in high school is all these languages.

By the time you're high school, your brain's all screwed up.

[Speaker 1] (15:10 - 15:17)

I know. From all the bullying and the trauma and the bullshit.

[Speaker 2] (15:17 - 15:34)

When you're five years old, your brain's not screwed up. So when you start talking, I live in Dallas. So obviously Spanish is the main thing down here.

I'm a Texan native. So it's you know, but when you teach people at five years old, they pick it up because their brains are still innate. You know, and it's not like it's not like grown ups.

[Speaker 1] (15:35 - 15:35)

Right.

[Speaker 2] (15:36 - 15:54)

But the other thing was intriguing to me was you're talking to a guy that had I was just having this conversation with my wife the other day. We were talking about the James Bond series. And I was told by a little bird that, you know, a lot about James Bond movies.

[Speaker 1] (15:55 - 15:59)

Oh, is this little birdie platinum blonde from Mission Viejo?

[Speaker 2] (16:02 - 16:15)

Well, no, it was actually in your bio. I go do research on everybody. I get it from the PR people, but then I do my own research.

But was your parents the one that kind of turned you on to that?

[Speaker 1] (16:17 - 16:23)

My dad was. Yeah, he showed me my first Bond movie when I was seven years old.

[Speaker 2] (16:23 - 16:24)

Which one did you see?

[Speaker 1] (16:24 - 16:43)

I don't I don't I don't remember. I do. I do remember, though, that it was you're probably going to say, well, that's all of them.

But it was the one where where the one of the bad guys that he's trying to fight off gets in the front seat of the car and he just like ejects him from.

[Speaker 2] (16:43 - 16:49)

Oh, that's that's that is I think it's Goldfinger.

[Speaker 1] (16:50 - 16:51)

Yeah, OK.

[Speaker 2] (16:51 - 17:10)

I think it is Goldfinger because he had. Yeah, it is. And that's when they caught him, because I know it's like, you know, everybody goes, well, he's your favorite.

My wife is like, who's your favorite Bond? And all that good stuff. And you chose Goldeneye is the one that you chose.

And who's saying that in the movie?

[Speaker 1] (17:11 - 17:12)

Tina. Tina Turner.

[Speaker 2] (17:12 - 17:14)

Oh, Tina Turner did. OK.

[Speaker 1] (17:14 - 17:14)

Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (17:15 - 17:18)

So let's talk about your career.

[Speaker 1] (17:18 - 17:19)

Mm hmm.

[Speaker 2] (17:20 - 18:12)

And this is the part I started out with. A.D.M. Excellent. I see things with two million views.

I watch you perform a couple of places, whatever is online, you know, I can find some of that stuff. And then all of a sudden you go, I'm going to go back to singing standards. I think that takes a lot of guts because the fact is you obviously want to do it.

That's why you're doing an album and releasing it in February. But it's something must be in your soul that says I got to do this, even though I'm a successful artist and probably could do that for a while. I don't know.

I assume because it's so much electronic. But is it something that never left you that you always wanted to go back to singing in the Italian restaurant?

[Speaker 1] (18:15 - 18:16)

Um, well.

[Speaker 2] (18:16 - 18:17)

You know what I mean? Going back.

[Speaker 1] (18:18 - 18:18)

Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (18:18 - 18:22)

Is that the goal? They're not classics, but they are. Some of them are.

[Speaker 1] (18:24 - 19:27)

Absolutely. It's something that that never left me, even when I was doing a lot of the A.D.M. stuff and being, you know, the young, wild and free kind of, you know, defiant sort of sort of artist. And even so, that essence aesthetically never really left me either.

Even when I was doing A.D.M. because I never really subscribed to a lot of the contemporary aesthetics that are out right now. Like I never fell into that sort of cookie cutter formulaic look that's that's kind of just, you know, frivolous and just a little. Yeah, I would say I would say elementary and surface level like I always wanted to make sure that I that I had that sort of classic look throughout whatever I did.

[Speaker 2] (19:28 - 19:33)

But I have to mention that. What do people come up and think? What country you're from?

[Speaker 1] (19:34 - 20:12)

Oh, I get everything from from Russia to Russia to Russia, Russia. Yeah, everyone thinks I'm I'm either from from some Eastern European country, but or from Germany or from Norway or just something, something Scandinavian or Eastern European. But, yeah, I should I should probably from now on say that I'm from Russia with love to be on brand like.

[Speaker 2] (20:13 - 20:17)

But you should start speaking in a Russian accent. That would be hilarious.

[Speaker 1] (20:17 - 20:21)

Oh, I can still do the Russian accent.

[Speaker 2] (20:21 - 20:28)

So when I ask you that and you start going, you speak in like the Russian accent and I go, oh, so it disappears when you sing. Oh, yeah. It's just like the British people.

I don't.

[Speaker 1] (20:31 - 20:38)

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

I'm like I'm listening to Amy Winehouse. I'm like, that could be like a black woman from the South.

[Speaker 2] (20:39 - 21:50)

Same day. But, you know, the other thing about what you're doing is there's more exposure for you. I mean, as far as an artist, because it's it's you're laying yourself bare out there when you're doing a whether you're doing a James Bond music or something classic, whatever you want to call it.

You got to you got to sing it real good, as we say, because people know. And, you know, not that EDM is not this. You still have to sing on key and all that stuff, but you're not doing the long drawn out notes and you're not holding the falsetto and all that stuff.

And you got you don't have a lot of you got the basic stuff behind you. That's why I said at the beginning, you're taking a risk. And you and for two reasons, that's one of them.

But you got to know how you can how good you can sing anyway, because that's why you would do it, because, you know, that's why you think you can do it, because that's why you did the album. But the other thing is, it's a different audience appeal. You know, and and so I've watched to a couple of your videos, one where you're doing an EDM and then one you're doing one of the Bond things.

[Speaker 1] (21:50 - 21:51)

Right.

[Speaker 2] (21:51 - 22:22)

It's funny because you do have a tremendous amount of energy when you do the EDM stuff, which you have to have because that's what it is. But then you're doing like 180 degree where you just kind of laid back, which is exactly what you're saying when you do what you're doing the other. Tell me what on this particular LP or the album you're working on.

What what tunes are on there? Did you write any of them or are you just doing the classics? I'm not saying just, but I mean, you're doing covers or tell me a little bit about that.

[Speaker 1] (22:23 - 23:59)

Yeah, the album is comprised of of the classic Bond songs in a re-stylized and stripped down version. And it's produced by Myron McKinley, who actually co-produced my cover of Witchcraft by Frank Sinatra a couple of years ago. And Ralph Johnson from Earth, Wind and Fire also co-produced that with Myron as well.

And that won a Hollywood Independent Music Award. But Myron and I joined forces on this one because I knew that he was going to be and he was going to deliver and that he was going to understand the assignment so well. Because he's stripped down songs from like Man in the Mirror and also songs from The Wiz.

And he's just he he has this this ability to to put a another signature on it. So I knew that he was going to be the guy for it for this project. But the songs that are on the album are from all the decades of Bond from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and today.

So I have I have Goldfinger on there. I have Diamonds Are Forever on there. I have For Your Eyes Only.

I have A View To A Kill on there. I have Golden Eye. I have Surrender From Tomorrow Never Dies.

And then I do Skyfall, Writings On The Wall and then No Time To Die.

[Speaker 2] (24:01 - 24:03)

And you got all that. You got all the decades covered.

[Speaker 1] (24:04 - 24:54)

Yeah, all the decades covered. And then I I did a stripped down version of one of my Billboard charting songs called A Deeper Love, which I wrote with Damon Sharpe. But Myron stripped it stripped it down to a really nice smokey version.

And that's going to be a bonus track on the album because that in its stripped down form sounds it's it sounds sonically so much like a Bond song. So I wanted to throw that one on there as well. And yeah, I cover all the decades of on and it's just a it's a it's a journey.

And I think I think I'll do a volume two just to expand.

[Speaker 2] (24:55 - 24:58)

There's there's 20, 25 movies. I mean, I forgot how many there is.

[Speaker 1] (24:58 - 25:12)

Yeah. Yeah. 25 movies.

25 movies. Yeah. I'd like to do a volume two to cover the rest.

And then that that'll also expand the show as well.

[Speaker 2] (25:12 - 25:24)

But, you know, the other thing, too, I think you've got going on with you is the fact that you yeah, you switch audiences, but you have a longer staying power. They called classics, but they're called that for a reason.

[Speaker 1] (25:25 - 25:25)

Right.

[Speaker 2] (25:25 - 25:46)

Because they've helped with, you know, why do why do we listen to the same stuff at Christmas time that people listen to in the 40s or, you know, it's the classics. And you're also probably going to expose people that never maybe ever saw a James Bond movie, you know, because I've seen them all.

[Speaker 1] (25:47 - 25:47)

Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (25:48 - 26:02)

And and you're right. They're all basically the same. But, you know, why do people quit?

I said they get too old. Daniel Craig said the same thing. They're Rogers.

Rogers said Roger. My camera's listening. Anyway, he said.

[Speaker 1] (26:02 - 26:03)

Roger Moore. Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (26:03 - 26:11)

Yeah. Roger Moore. He said, I can't be 55 and being having a scene with a 22 year old Bond girl just doesn't look right.

[Speaker 1] (26:11 - 26:18)

Yeah. Well, thank you for him saying that, because it's, you know, especially in this industry, what's going on?

[Speaker 2] (26:18 - 26:32)

Oh, yes. Well, that's completely different now. Yeah.

You must really want to be standing in front of full symphony and and do like, you know, Goldfinger, which you can go. I'm sure you've seen.

[Speaker 1] (26:32 - 26:34)

Oh, my gosh.

[Speaker 2] (26:34 - 26:36)

I mean, with the whole thing behind you.

[Speaker 1] (26:36 - 26:51)

The chills that just went down my spine. I can see you when you when you said that. Yeah.

The chills that I just got goosebumps when you said that. I don't know that that means it's spiritual confirmation, but.

[Speaker 2] (26:52 - 27:37)

No, I mean, I think. Can't you see you? I'm sure when you did this, you said to yourself, everybody has a dream.

I don't care where you are in your in your in your career. I still envision you. And I look forward to the day when I see it.

Oh, look who's walking out on stage. Oh, look who's going to sing in front of this. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome.

And here you come and you sing the song and you have to realize that that's a moment that's coming for you. You know that. Yeah, it's great.

And I may be speaking out of turn here, but I don't know, have any idea what your goal is other than play the music that you love and redoing it. So it's different. What is your goal?

[Speaker 1] (27:38 - 29:12)

Well, the goal with this with this album is to create a show and the show is going to debut in February, February 15th in Vegas. And the goal is to create a show out of this album and to either create a residency or take it nationally and internationally. Because I just don't I just don't see the appeal with Bond stopping just in the city of sin.

I see. I because it's just so global. I mean, just just look at the movies alone.

They it's like a whole geography lesson. Oh, yeah. You see, it's like a whole a whole travel guide to exotic places.

So and that escapism of Bond is just what what what has made it so not not only like revered, but also, you know, memorable, too. So it has a global appeal that I am looking forward to. To being a part of.

And that's another reason why I decided to do this project is because the demographic and the audience for a bond. I mean, it's already baked in.

[Speaker 2] (29:13 - 29:14)

Oh, yeah, sure. It is.

[Speaker 1] (29:14 - 29:20)

It's already it's already baked into the to the to the martini shaker.

[Speaker 2] (29:21 - 29:59)

Well, and then you can get crossover because the fact like me being a baby boomer, I've seen them all. I wasn't very old when the first Dr. No came out. I was telling our friend the other day I sat in the back seat of my sister's eventually became her husband watching it at a drive in theater, you know.

And back then it was funny because the movies, they didn't have our ratings or anything like they called him M for mature. And most of my friends, my parents didn't care. But a lot of I can't go see it because it's got Emma mature.

And I'm like, OK, then you'll never get all the jokes and all that stuff. And, you know, we waited for the jokes that Sean Connery.