Shea Diamond

Did You Know?

• Diamond's influences include Whitney Houston and Tina Turner.
• Her songwriting has been described as demonstrating a rare gift to portray raw, dynamic emotion in a way that moves the body as much as the spirit.

Early life

Shea Diamond was born in Little Rock, Arkansas; her mother was just fourteen. Relatives in Memphis, Tennessee raised her, and she spent most of her adolescence and adult life in Flint, Michigan. At fourteen, she left home and entered foster care, gaining legal independence at seventeen. From a young age, she knew she was a woman but felt strong pressure to behave in a masculine way.

Tina Turner inspired her to sing, and she honed her voice leading her church choir, though she was often criticized for singing in a high register. When she was twenty, she held up a convenience store with a gun to get money for gender affirmation surgery. Between 1999 and 2009, she cycled through Michigan’s men’s prisons. While incarcerated, she wrote the song “I Am Her.”

As a trans woman, she endured discrimination: she was placed in protective segregation, had privileges taken away, and faced humiliation, isolation, and deliberate misgendering as punishment.

Career

Justin Tranter, a pop songwriter, reached out to Shea Diamond after seeing her perform "I Am Her" a cappella at a Trans Lives Matter rally. Tranter helped sign her to Asylum Records and worked as executive producer and co-writer on her debut EP, Seen It All, which came out on June 29, 2018. In 2017, Diamond recorded a cover of Ten Years After's "I'd Love to Change the World" for the miniseries When We Rise. She joined the Human Rights Campaign's Equality Rocks campaign in December 2018.

The following February, she earned a GLAAD Media Award nomination for Outstanding Music Artist. That same year, Pete Buttigieg, a 2020 presidential candidate, endorsed her song "American Pie" and used it at his campaign rallies. She headlined the Washington, DC Capital Pride Concert in June 2019. On June 7, 2019, she put out the single "Don't Shoot," which Paper magazine noted carries a message against gun violence and reflects her life as a Black trans woman who has been incarcerated and faced systemic discrimination.

Diamond's hand appeared on the original cover of Sam Smith's third album, then called To Die For, and she also appears in the music video for Smith's "I'm Ready" with Demi Lovato. Her track "I Am America" became the theme for HBO's We're Here, released as a single on April 23, 2020, and later named one of the best LGBTQ songs of 2020 by Billboard.