Andra Day Artistfacts

December 30, 1984
With a big, soulful voice and a style that evokes looks from earlier times, Andra Day landed a breakout role playing the troubled singer Billie Holiday in the 2021 movie The United States vs. Billie Holiday, directed by Lee Daniels. By this time, she was already established as a singer; her 2015 debut album, Cheers To The Fall, includes the song "Rise Up," which became an anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Her birth name is Cassandra Monique Batie. Her stage name as a combination of her nickname "Andra" and a reference to Billie Holiday's nickname, "Lady Day."
Andra Day earned a Grammy nomination for her first album (Best R&B Album for Cheers To The Fall, released in 2015) and an Oscar nomination for her first leading film role (Best Actress for The United States vs. Billie Holiday, released in 2021).

She's not good at everything, though. She had a job at a video store that she quit on the first day.
Billie Holiday, of course, was one of the singers who inspired Day to pursue music, but another big influence is Lauryn Hill. "That album helped me become a woman," she told Andy Cohen. (Hill released just one studio album: The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill in 1998.)
Pronounce her name with a hard A because it's short for Cassandra.
In 2010, Andra Day was sharing a studio apartment in Chula Vista, California (near San Diego) with her mom when she made a trip to Malibu to play a small concert that ended up changing her life. Stevie Wonder, via his wife, heard the recording and contacted day. Over the next few years, he put her in touch with people who helped launch her career, and in 2015 he recorded a new version of his holiday favorite "Someday At Christmas" that was used in an Apple commercial, bringing Day a lot more attention.
Two big-stage performances from Andra Day were:

1) The Grammy Awards in 2016, where she sang part of "Rise Up" and was then joined by Ellie Goulding to share vocals on Goulding's hit "Love Me Like You Do."

2) The Super Bowl in 2024, where she sang "Lift Every Voice And Sing."
Her first tour was opening for Lenny Kravitz in 2015.
She graduated from the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts in 2003. She worked lots of odd jobs before finding her footing in music; her first album wasn't released until she was 30.
She teamed up again with Lee Daniels to star in his 2024 movie The Deliverance, a horror movie where she stars as a mother whose children become possessed. A devout Christian, Day had some reservations about the role, says she "prayed about it and had peace."

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