Million Miles is the solo recording project of Paris-born, London-based singer/songwriter Sophie Baudry. Now, as the story goes, Baudry has had a life-long love affair with soul music and although she studied at Boston’s Berklee College and had a brief stint in New York working as recording engineer and studio musician, she returned to London and felt an irresistible pull to create the sort of soul music inspired by the likes of Ray Charles and Bill Withers. Baudry wound up in Nashville, TN on a whim. “I thought, ‘Why not?'” the French-born, British singer/songwriter recalls in press notes.
She spent the her first few days and hours in Nashville wandering, exploring and reaching out to strangers as though saying “I’m new here and I’m a songwriter and i’m looking for people to collaborate with.” After a chance meeting Baudry wound up collaborating with songwriters/producers Robin Eaton and Paul Eberson. As Baudry recalls, she instantly hit it off with Eaton. “We met for coffee near his studio,” she recalls in press notes, “and an hour later, we started writing a song. It was quite immediate.”
Baudry’s debut as Million Miles, Berry Hill EP was recored over a year during multiple sessions at Robin Eaton’s Berry Hill home studio, and the album reportedly focuses on the journeys taken and lessons learned in the up-and-coming singer/songwriter’s life — and from the EP’s latest single “Can’t Get Around A Broken Heart,” Baudry specializes in an easy-going and effortless singer/songwriter-based soul that brings to mind the aforementioned Bill Withers and Sandra Rhodes’ sadly under-appreciated and seemingly forgotten debut Where’s Your Love Been, as the song possesses a loose, Sunday afternoon country twang. But pay close attention, because much like the sources that influence her, Baudry’s vocals and songwriting has the rare ability to craft an infectious song that manages to be emotionally ambiguous — within a turn of a phrase, Baudry can express exquisite joy and heartache.
Directed by Sequoia Ziff, the recently released video manages to capture Baudry in a series of moods — mainly pensive and coquettish and while evoking an idyllic summer afternoon with impossibly verdant greens, there’s a a mix of melancholy visuals — and it’s all done in a way to capture the song’s overall tone and mood.
