Prince protégée Donna Grantis elaborates on the titles for new 'Diamonds & Dynamite' album

March 26, 2019 at 5:35PM

There are no lyrics but every one of Donna Grantis' song titles has a story. She explains a few of them.

"Trashformer": She found an old, bent cymbal at Groth Music in Bloomington. "I really like the sound of it; it was really trashy," she recalled. "I was thinking: 'What would I love to hear [Pearl Jam guitarist] Mike McCready play over?' I was putting the cymbal stand together and I noticed the cymbal was called Trashformer. At that moment, that riff — like a lightning bolt — came to mind and the song was written."

"Elsa": The piece was inspired by the song "Frankenstein" by the Edgar Winter Group, with its different sections. "I thought to myself: It's the bride of 'Frankenstein.' I looked it up and [her name was] Elsa" — Elsa Lanchester, star of the 1935 movie.

"Diamonds & Dynamite": "I was thinking about highs and lows, ups and downs, the tumultuous times in 2016 [when Prince died] combined with the happiness of having a child. To me the song reflects both sides of the spectrum. Compositionally, there are two very different sections."

"Master Manifester": "I was texting with a friend and she was talking about the changes she wanted to make in her life and she said she wanted to be a master manifester. And I thought, 'Can I take that title?' What I was manifesting was the visual of me playing a ton of funk lines that I'd learned so much about over the past few years."

"Lioness": "I was reading [her son] Koen a children's book about what animals are called. For example, lion, cub and lioness. That was super-inspiring. That led to 'Lioness,' which starts off kind of experimental with a lot of strange sounds. It's brooding and, by the end, it's pretty heavy rock riff. The visuals of that, I think about a lioness."

about the writer

about the writer

Jon Bream

Critic / Reporter

Jon Bream has been a music critic at the Star Tribune since 1975, making him the longest tenured pop critic at a U.S. daily newspaper. He has attended more than 8,000 concerts and written four books (on Prince, Led Zeppelin, Neil Diamond and Bob Dylan). Thus far, he has ignored readers’ suggestions that he take a music-appreciation class.

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