There may not be a clinical diagnosis for perpetual jet lag, but Danielle Ponder is sure she has it. In the past month, the soulful singer has been pushing the limits of her passport and circadian rhythms. She took a gig in London, scooted over to Paris to see Jay-Z, did a ton of press in New York City and L.A. for her new album, Everything Has Changed, headed back home to Atlanta for some appointments, and then went to Mexico City in search of peace and quiet.

“I’m tired,” Ponder admits as we catch up on Zoom, joking that I should see her Pinterest board right now. “It’s just different beds and comforter sets,” she admits, perhaps hoping that creating a mood board will manifest rest. But not today. As we talk, Ponder is on the move again. This time, it’s just changing Airbnbs in L.A. But she still needs to pack up her bags, which makes it a bit awkward asking her to simultaneously unpack thoughts around her latest record. With the triumphant intro of “Seasons” cascading into the pensive “Time Is a Wild Thing,” it too comes off like one wild journey, and there are so many questions.

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As the title implies, a lot has changed for Ponder in the past four years since she released Some of Us Are Brave in 2022. It was a stellar debut that stirred the pot of soul, R&B, and gospel behind a powerful voice that comes off like a Million Dollar Quartet of Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Mavis Staples, and Adele.

Naturally, it was just a matter of time before people caught on to Ponder’s talent, which brought opportunities to play Lollapalooza, BottleRock, and Newport Folk Festival. Television debuts on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” and “CBS Mornings” gave her more street cred, not to mention a cameo in the soap opera “General Hospital.” And before long, her music was featured in the holy grail of syncs: Apple—both an iPhone commercial and on the Apple TV series “Manhunt.” Ponder’s most recent power move was signing to indie imprint Dead Oceans, promoted as a partnership between her and indie darling/roster mate Phoebe Bridgers. The two didn’t work together—Bridgers was a bit busy cutting Lost Weekend, but it’s still one heck of a co-sign.

But that’s just the good stuff. During the same four years, Ponder also dealt with breakups (one of which plays out in the persecutory “Sun and Moon”) and the domino effect of her whole life changing when she made the ultimate job switch in 2021 (the inspiration for the anthemic “Made My Bed”). That’s the year she went from working as a full-time public defender in the courts to working as a full-time musician after entering her powerful track “Poor Man’s Pain” into NPR’s 2020 Tiny Desk Contest turned heads. She hasn’t looked back since, even if it’s been a challenging transition.

“I think some of us are brave at the beginning of a journey, but the courage and the hope and the faith that bring you to a destination also make you realize that everything has changed,” she says, illustrating the undeniable throughline between her two albums. “It’s a realization that, even when you get your dreams, you bring a lot of stuff with you. And it’s not as Pollyanna and perfect as one would assume. This record is me navigating a lot of the things that were happening in my life, a lot of grief and loss … my whole world kind of shifted in a way.”

To ground herself, Ponder went on yet another trip, this time to one of her favorite places in the world: Dakar, Senegal. Being in Africa produced one of the most vociferous moments on Everything Has Changed, a sermon-song called “Power” that promotes a sense of strength and pride being a Black person in America, when so much interference aims to dilute that message. “Power” was the last track Ponder worked on and embedded with her vocal sorcery is an original piece of poetry from friend, activist, and educator Reenah Golden, which compares the color black to a bevy of wonders in the natural world. By the end, Golden declares, “Black is the color of love” so resolutely it becomes undisputable fact.

“I knew this album needed a Black anthem … I couldn’t put out an album without one,” says Ponder. “It felt necessary.” The album art makes a similar bold statement—it offers an artsy black-and-white picture of Ponder, eyes closed, skin glowing with an iridescent shimmer, beneath an intricate braided hair design that looks like a crown for an African queen. “There are multiple inspirations, but I really just wanted the hair to be powerful. Usually, I’ve been wearing this big afro in the past, but I wanted something that was stronger and had more structure to it,” she explains, noting her Pinterest board once again came to her rescue when ideating the look.

The final design was the handiwork of Kimberly Kimble, an in-demand stylist who designed Beyonce’s iconic braids in the “Lemonade” music video and counts Zendaya as a regular client. “My friend worked with [Kimberly] before and sent her my music and said, ‘Do you think you would work with this artist? She really doesn’t have your budget, but she’s so good.’ And she wrote back and said, absolutely. …I still can’t believe we made that happen,” says Ponder, her eyes growing wider as she tells the tale. “The same woman who did the hair in ‘Lemonade’ is working on the cover of my album? But she was so gracious and treated me just like any other client. … And I just love that shot and that it was an all-Black woman production. The photographer was a Black woman. The creative director was a Black woman. I’m really proud of that shoot.”

The styling carries over to the music video for “Power,” which Ponder filmed in Dakar. It’s an incredibly sacred place for the singer that first opened her eyes to the African diaspora when she was 17 years old and growing up in a polarizing urban environment of Rochester, New York.

“I was living in the hood of America in a very segregated city and … everything around you is telling you that you are less than, whether it’s the condition of your school or interactions with the police, or the fact that you can walk three blocks the other way and you’re in a beautiful all-white neighborhood. So, you begin to take those messages on,” she explains of some early defining moments where systemic racism reared its ugly head.

“But going to Dakar at that age, it expanded the story of Blackness for me,” she countered. “It showed me the possibilities. For the first time, I’m in a country with a Black president. All of the lawyers are Black. All of the doctors are Black. If you go to a rich neighborhood, they’re all Black. I came home feeling so empowered and my life was never the same after that. There was pretty much nothing you could tell me. I’ve been called the N-word. I’ve had all types of racist things happen. But that moment gave me such confidence in my Blackness that shit really rolls off of me now. … And now, going back 25-plus years later, it just caused me to reflect that I don’t think I would be who I am if I had not gone at such an early age and had that foundation.”

The trip changed Ponder’s life so much that, while she was working as an attorney, she carved out time to start a camp in her community to teach African culture and history to other teens. “I felt like it was so important to connect to the diaspora. And I think of doing the same thing now because I know how life-changing it is and I know how suffocating it can be living in this country as a Black person, especially as a child in your developmental years, you’re learning who you are and you’re ingesting these messages.”

Ponder received a powerful one when she was 16 and saw her brother Dwayne arrested for robbing a bar. He received a 20-year prison sentence due to previous run-ins and New York state’s “three strikes” law that significantly increases prison sentences even when the crimes are non-violent. Everything changed for Ponder then, too.

At the time, the singer—who grew up the daughter of a pastor father and social worker mother—was a part of a soul/rock family band called Black August with her cousins and another sibling. “We thought we were going to be famous,” she jokes. But Ponder left it behind to pursue another meaningful path. The time visiting her brother in jail and seeing so many others locked up for petty offenses activated Ponder and she soon turned her sights to the criminal justice system. “When I decided to go to law school [at Northeastern University in Boston], my whole family was devastated,” she recalls. “It was like the reverse where everyone was so disappointed that I chose law school over the family band. And it caused a lot of drama.”

Today, a few of her cousins still work in music, largely as producers in Atlanta, and one often joins Ponder on the road as a musician in her backing band. Before giving up law completely, Ponder still dipped her toes in the craft, pulling double duty as a trial lawyer by day and moonlighting in projects like Danielle Ponder & the Tomorrow People by night. But a few days before turning 40, she officially closed the book on law and went after the dream that had been simmering within her for a while.

“The more I performed, the more people I met, and the more encouragement I got, it just became clear,” Ponder says of flipping the switch, goaded on by cheerleaders like rapper Q-Tip. “I mean, that’s all it takes is Q-Tip to tell you, you good and your music career is going to reward you for all of the work that you’ve done as a public defender. … I’ve thought about that since I graduated college,” she adds, conceding, “I do have a passion for criminal justice. I loved my work as a public defender and what I did, but there are many people who are lawyers and who will do that work. There are a few people who have special gifts. And I think while I could still be a lawyer, I really believe my gift is my voice. And I wanted to honor that gift by fully committing to it.”

Ponder does miss practicing law sometimes, though. “I miss trial,” she clarifies. “There’s nothing like being on trial, probably because that’s a performance, too. Sometimes I miss the debate, but I just argue with people in my life, which they love,” she adds. Ponder is very good at keeping a poker face like any good lawyer who knows how to not show their cards, but it’s obvious she’s being sarcastic. “They don’t love it at all,” she adds, finally breaking face. “My mom was like, oh you just need to be in court, don’t you? But it’s true.”

As Ponder’s music career continues to ascend, she’s cognizant of the platform she’s been bestowed and hopes to find a way to bring it to the intersection of music and policy where using her voice can take on multiple forms.

“Often in shows, I speak about what I’ve done as a public defender, but I do think there’s a greater role for me to play, and I have not quite figured out what that is yet. I just know there is one.” Ponder admittedly is exhausted with that pursuit, too. “I’ve been living it since my brother got taken away. I’ve been organizing and working in it since then. … I worked in the nonprofit sector. I worked in activism. I was a refugee caseworker. I worked in the schools. I organized. I walked door-to-door to talk about education funding. I’ve done a lot in my life around trying to make this country [better], trying to help my community understand what was happening. And I’ve gotten a little jaded and tired of trying,” she laments.

“I don’t even know if I want to live here anymore. That’s how over it I am,” she says of the current state of America where people have to declare Black lives matter rather than it already being a fundamental truth. “How often can I declare that I’m a human being? That my life matters? How often must I do that? I’m tired of begging. I’m tired of begging for people to see me,” she says, stopping all of her packing for a moment to really focus her thoughts. “And then when I’m somewhere like Dakar, I feel like I could be a human being. I’m not thinking about what’s happening in the U.S. I’m not thinking about my Blackness. I’m just a human being. So, yeah, I’m looking for an exit strategy,” she admits. Suddenly all the travel makes sense.

Thankfully, there are some places where she’s found harmony, like the storied songwriters’ hollow of Laurel Canyon. At first, Ponder knew nothing of its musical history or how it became a hideaway for L.A.’s folk tribe looking for a reflective spot of community. “I had an Airbnb in Laurel Canyon, and people were like, oh do you know about it? But I did not,” Ponder shares. Yet she understood the feeling after just a few days inside the cove and ended up writing her own acoustic charmer named after the mythical spot. The song closes out the journey of Everything Has Changed where Ponder comes to an important yet simple realization: There’s a real beauty in letting go.

The singer rationalizes that it may be because she’s getting closer to 50; in January, she turns 45. “I just had lunch with a woman the other day who’s 50 who told me, you’re in the beginning phases of the transition, and then it blossoms into something beautiful. You’re like, letting go of all of the things that you thought, all of the things that you felt were so important. And I’m starting to feel that already. …I need to take men off of the pedestal. I don’t have to chase perfection,” she shares of the wisdom she’s gained.

“But it’s like enough, you know? Enough. I am where I am. I am present. I am enjoying what’s happening in my life. And sometimes I’m not enjoying it, but that’s okay as well. But it’s like I’m putting out all of this stuff on this album. I’m afraid of getting older. This man left me. But by ‘Laurel Canyon,’ it’s just peace and acceptance,” she explains.

“It’s accepting that life ebbs and flows. There’s good, there’s bad. I don’t even like to call it good and bad. Shit just happens. Beautiful shit and hard shit. But we choose every day. … We chose to come here and have our spirits embody the physical form. And when you think of it that way it’s like taking your soul on a ride. Show them everything you got. It is a gift to be able to be in a physical body and experience all of the emotions fully. I think that’s where I am now.” With everything that has changed for Ponder, this newfound perspective may be the greatest gift of all.

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