From Dakota Johnson to Ben Stiller, nepo babies can be flat-out awesome.<\/p>\n
Friday at Austin City Limits Music Festival, 21-year-old Sienna\u00a0Spiro, fresh off a Best New Artist Moonman at the MTV VMAs, poured out her soul for 45 minutes. The jazzy British singer is the daughter of jeweler Glenn\u00a0Spiro, whose clients include Beyonc\u00e9<\/a> and Gwyneth Paltrow.<\/a> He\u2019s sold stones for $3.4 million apiece<\/a> at Sotheby\u2019s.<\/p>\n Does that make his daughter beneficiary of nepotism? Look around: The music industry is ripe with connected and wealthy artists who had significant creative support growing up. Here at\u00a0Zilker Park, Stella Lefty\u2019s dad is a tech billionaire. Steve Aoki\u2019s dad is the founder of Benihana. Lorde\u2019s mom is an award-winning poet. Charli XCX\u2019s dad is a talent agent. The band Geese\u00a0met<\/a> at the Brooklyn Friends School, where tuition is more than $65,000 a year<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n But something funny happened during\u00a0Spiro\u2019s mid-afternoon ACL Fest set on the Miller Lite stage: Thousands of teens cried along to her relatable songwriting. This reporter got a little teary, too, which is the involuntary reaction you always want at a show.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve seen these exhausting jazz singers from England, from Olivia Dean to\u00a0Raye. Their Starbucks pop is textbook easy, flat listening. Their bands wear suits and pantomime over backing tracks. It\u2019s jazz club music for people who go to jazz clubs \u2014 and talk.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sienna\u00a0Spiro, however, is a storyteller. She\u2019s more like Adele. Her heart is on her sleeve. Her lyrics sting. She cops to being \u201ctoo sentimental\u201d on breakup ballads.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m\u00a0gonna bring the mood down quite drastically,\u201d she\u2019d admit pre-song, rocking a polka-dotted dress. Songs like \u201cHe\u2019s Not My Baby I\u2019m His\u201d are cautionary tales about power dynamics.<\/p>\n She sang with raspy purpose in\u00a0soaring, human fashion. And when she covered Otis Redding\u2019s 1968 standard \u201cHard To Handle,\u201d she introduced her backing band \u2014 and they did something you never see at ACL nowadays. They didn\u2019t just wave to the dang audience. They each flexed their technical prowess with solos.<\/p>\n Here a sea of distraught and dehydrated teens cried, sang while recording on their phones and screamed with British Invasion fervor. It was empowering. They\u2019ll spin her records forever.<\/p>\n \u201cI know I\u2019m temporary,\u201d\u00a0Spiro belts on \u201cThe Visitor.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s in my nature to be cynical.\u201d It\u2019s cutting work that afforded Spiro the luxury of letting her fans carry the tune.<\/p>\n Would\u00a0Spiro be at ACL without her family\u2019s estate? Not yet. But given the opportunity to step into the ring, she landed every body blow.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m about to faint,\u201d\u00a0Spiro told onlookers before closing with her megahit, \u201cGreat Expectations.\u201d Same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Dakota Johnson to Ben Stiller, nepo babies can be flat-out awesome. Friday at Austin City Limits Music…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-462249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}