| Melanie Faye | |
| Birth Date: | 16 May 1998 |
| Occupation: | Guitarist |
| Years Active: | 2016–present |
Melanie Faye (born May 16, 1998), is an American R&B<ref name="affinitymagazine.us">Web site: An Interview with Melanie Faye: R&B Artist On the Rise. Johnson, Hailey. 21 March 2018. Affinity Magazine. musician and social media personality. She became known after a video of her guitar playing on Instagram went viral in the summer of 2017.[1] She has since performed with artists such as Noname[2] and Mac Demarco.[3] [4] She was a featured artist at the NAMM Show.
Born in Huntsville, Alabama and raised in a Jehovah's Witness household by chemist parents,[5] Faye began writing songs at an early age. Her family moved to Nashville, Tennessee when she was three, and in the third grade she won a music competition run by the Country Music Hall of Fame. She credits her fascination with becoming a musician from learning how to play Guitar Hero in middle school. She got her first guitar a year later "trading in her Xbox controller for the real thing."[6] [7] She studied jazz guitar at the performing arts high school Nashville School of the Arts. Faye had "idolized Mariah Carey when I was a little girl," and started writing songs when she was 19.
Faye's guitar skills came to prominence in the summer of 2017 when SZA retweeted a 2016 video of Faye playing her sky blue Fender Stratocaster. Amassing a large number of followers and receiving critical acclaim, she dropped out of school to pursue music full-time. She cites Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson, and Eric Gale as major influences on her playing style, which varies between R&B, neo-soul, and funk. She has performed nationwide with associated soul and R&B acts such as Noname, Bibi McGill, Masego, and Dammo. She was featured on the cover of She Shreds magazine,[8] and was chosen by Fender to demo the Player Series of guitars.[9] [10] Faye sees her guitar playing as a role model for others: "I want more people who don't necessarily listen to rock to also play guitar."