Raised on a soundtrack of LeAnn Rimes, Brooks & Dunn, and Verdi, out recording artist Cornelius Versa blends country storytelling with the drama of his classical roots. His debut album, The Crystal Cowboy, is a wide-open jukebox of heartache, rebellion, and queer identity, tracing the path to finally finding his voice.
At its core, the new collection is a country album, but the listening experience is bigger than that, blending touches of classical arrangements, opera, folk, rock, and pop — or as he likes to call it, “Operatic Americana.”
This writer discovered Versa when Instagram ‘suggested’ a post by the handsome artist singing “Not That Girl” from WICKED. First of all, easy on the eyes (thank you, Instagram). More importantly, I was immediately mesmerized by Versa’s rich, artful vocals. I ended up hitting play again, and again, and again. Here’s that first clip – this is a world-class voice, folks. His voice – his technique, his phrasing, his tone – is undeniable, as is the underlying emotion.
@corneliusversa Soft cowboys tho #wickedthemusical #countrywicked #wickedmovie
After clicking on more and more videos, I reached out to Versa to chat about his music, and found he’d recently released his debut album, The Crystal Cowboy. On every listen, his artistry shines through.
From Cornelius Versa to ‘The Crystal Cowboy’
After graduating from the prestigious (and challenging) music program at Carnegie Mellon University, Versa found “there was such a disconnect between the music that I wanted to sing, spoiler alert – country music, and the music I had been trained to sing, which was musical theater, classical music, and opera, and that dissonance became so strong.” In our chat, he recalled performing at a concert where the host introduced him as a “classical singer” and he could feel the audience perceive him – before singing a note – that he was “a classical singer” even though that wasn’t the genre of music he was performing.
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While he embraces the classical aspect of his voice (“I do have that quality in my voice”), he adds, “There’s also folk and rock and pop and country.” So he came up with the term “classical Americana” to include all aspects of his music.
Check out the moody, music video for his single, “Velvet Blues.” From the first notes, Versa sets the tone for where we going, giving himself space to grow as he takes us on the song’s musical journey. Bonus points for the uncomplicated, artful approach to the video featuring just Versa and a lone dancer in the shadows.
Versa also credits his appearance on The Voice last year with helping shape his resolve in singing his music for himself. By luck of the draw, his blind audition came late in the process, and by the time he took to the stage some judges had already filled their “teams,” and others had picked country singers for theirs, thus limiting his chances. Plus, the show producers chose an Elvis Presley song (from a list he’d submitted) for him to perform which wouldn’t have been his first choice. Even though he performed well (you can find his intro package and performance on YouTube), it wasn’t meant to be.
“I was like, okay, I’m gonna commit to this,” says Versa. “I’m a professional, I commit. I’m thankful for the experience, of course. But, going later in the process, your odds really do go down. And when it didn’t work out in the way that I had hoped, I realized I’m never again going to do something for someone else that doesn’t give me joy.”
“It was just one of those things of being in the right place at the wrong time,” he adds. “I know it’s not me, and I know it has nothing to do with my value as an artist or my ability as a singer. It wasn’t that at all. It was just kind of reconciling the reality of feeling like I won the lottery, and when I went to turn in my ticket, and they were like, oh no, that one doesn’t work.”
That “lightbulb moment” led Versa to tell his own musical story by creating music his way. Thus, The Crystal Cowboy. “The process of writing the album was really such a culmination of finally getting to the point in my life where I was ready to stop pleasing people.”
“I felt like I’d spent my whole career kind of diminishing myself. And I find this in classical music and musical theater training. ‘You can’t sing like this. You can’t sing like that.’ So [The Voice] kind of started this whole cannonball of rediscovering myself. In the last two years of writing this album, it’s been such a cathartic process of breaking down all of these rules that I was taught, or that I forced upon myself, and reworking them to fit my world as the Crystal Cowboy and my world of country music.”
And part of that process was not only creating the songs for the new album, but arranging the playlist to tell the story he wanted to tell. “When you listen to the album straight through, everything makes sense,” says the handsome artist. “It was such a beautiful full circle moment of getting it all together.”
Hit the play button below for my chat with the oh-so-charming Cornelius Versa. His debut album, The Crystal Cowboy, is available now on all major music platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. You can follow him on Instagram here.