Lizzie Thomas steps fully into her own on Awakening — a genre-blurring, soul-forward record where jazz, neo-soul, and vocal pop flow on intuition rather than rules.
Recorded at the legendary Powerstation with the Grammy-winning Harlem String Quartet, Awakening lands as a rebirth moment. Electric bass replaces upright, the B3 Hammond anchors the band, and emotional clarity drives every choice. These songs feel received more than written — channelled through dreams, stillness, and deep listening.
After years of tradition and working alongside legends, Thomas chooses freedom. We caught up with her to unpack Awakening, clairaudient songwriting, grief, healing, and finally claiming her voice.
When Awakening ends, what do you want left ringing in their heads…A desire to keep listening and the feeling of freedom.
Awakening feels like both a title and a reckoning — what sparked it?
The songs on Awakening are the result of a personal human awakening. A reckoning and a metamorphosis. Awakening is about feeling again- believing that maybe, just maybe, you might just get all the things you dream of or the “redo“ on life. That life hasn’t passed you by, the choices that you’ve made haven’t boxed you in- or you might have found the key to get out. The awakening process is about breaking down belief systems, looking at your life and deciding who you are and why you believe. Because you choose to create not because someone else told you what to believe.
You’re clairaudient — how does that energy hit your songwriting?
The energy IS my songwriting. I hear melodies and receive messages and that is how the songs are born. I am a vessel. I don’t decide to sit down at the piano and write a song- they come to me. And I respond. Yes- there is a responsibility to set aside time at the piano and compose the original ideas but I’m not crafting like a typical songwriter. It’s like receiving all these puzzle pieces and I start putting them together. The songs speak to me. I have conversations with them. They tell me what instrumentation, tempos, keys and changes throughout. They let me know when they are done and how they want to be heard.
Which lyric from Awakening still cuts the deepest on stage?
“you’ve got a revolution buried in your mind so live & be it and waste no time”. This FIRE
“You are the rising sun I quench my thirst upon, I am beloved moon, all tides ride upon, we are the golden one I hang my stars upon” This Love
This Love flips the script — what’s the fire behind it?
This Love is not your typical love song— with lush, dreamy vocals and a cinematic build, the track unfolds into a powerful key change that speaks to unity, truth, and loving yourself higher than anything else. Blending soul, pop, and jazz, it’s sexy, bold, and rooted in themes of freedom, authenticity, and being fully seen. It challenges the concept of self sacrifice as the true way to love and celebrates the concept that the highest form of love is self love.
Home hits close — how did grief shape that sound?
Home is about my mother and her transition into another dimension—it came to me through a vivid dream where we danced together, her presence was radiant and angelic. I knew that she was at peace and actually we knew each other before this lifetime. This song contains a lot of peace through a period of grief. Writing Home allowed me to process deep emotion, and like much of my music, the channelled expression is here to serve the collective—to help us move through our emotions and make sense of the unseen.
You swapped upright for electric — what drove the new groove?
As a Jazz vocalist in the Jazz canon, the beauty of it is that there’s ultimate creativity, there’s ultimate improvisation. You know, the idea is that you learn the song, you learn it from the root, and then not until then- do you get to make it into your own, which sometimes is nothing like the song; that’s freedom. That’s the idea of Jazz. I really embodied that for a long time, but I still felt like there were certain Jazz rules in the book that were keeping me from expressing myself in the ways that I wanted to, so one of the big changes I made was in just purely instrumentation.
The instrumentation on a Jazz album typically is an acoustic stand-up bass, and I ventured from that, and I have to say that’s a big deal, even though it doesn’t sound like a big deal. Moving to electric bass on most of the tracks was huge. I also pumped up the bass because a song like Slow Baby Slow was written purely with the instrumentation of the electric bass in mind. When you talk about the standard drum kit, the bass drum in the jazz world is usually 18 inches. What happens when you shift into pop, R&B, and hip hop, is that the bass drum goes to 20 inches and even 22 inches. So you’re getting a bigger, boomier sound. So the difference is in the Jazz world, you have tightness to the bass drum. And in other genres, you get a bigger, boomier sound. On Awakening, I shifted the instrumentation, the bass drum is bigger. There’s also the whining, bluesy, electric guitar on this album and you typically wouldn’t find it on a Jazz album. All those elements suggest a mixing of genres. Yet you still have a classic Jazz sound with Wayne Escoffery on soprano sax. He’s really driving that melodic dreamy feel with the soprano sax on some of these tracks. The songs demanded the instrumentaion and the setup.
You’ve worked with legends — what lesson still echoes loudest?
Serve the song and serve the melody. Russell Malone taught me that. You’re never finished with the work. Be curious and always ask the hard questions. What’s the worst thing that can happen? I can remember how nervous I was when I called Ron Carter to ask him to record with me. What an incredible experience that still resonates. Can you imagine if I had never called him?
This Fire burns with purpose — what should people feel when it hits?
Change starts from within. The only way to really create change externally is to foster change internally. The Man in the Mirror as Michael Jackson sang. This Fire drives with a desire for equality for all people. What we are doing to create peace and equality is clearly not working. This Fire lists/suggests all the things we are doing or not doing. “This Fire calls for unity and burning away old lines of separation.”
When Awakening ends, what do you want left ringing in their heads
A desire to keep listening and the feeling of freedom.
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