'They didn't feel represented in that moment. 'People didn't feel hopeful from that moment,' Michele said of the performance that changed the trajectory of her career.

As legions of fans have refused to come back, she realizes that a footnote of her career - or perhaps its epitaph - will be her connection to a man she didn't vote for, whose rhetoric she disdains and whom she has never met in person.ДЄ large swath of people who flocked to her brand of music wrote her off - and never returned, certainly not to the Keswick on a chilly December night. She still feels the sting of former fans who saw themselves in her music, then accused her of selling her blackness to a presidential candidate who, while on the campaign trail, repeatedly cast black Americans as impoverished people living in hellholes and dependent on food stamps. 'On November 6th, we get the opportunity to change the narrative and REBALANCE the scale,' she wrote before the midterm elections, below a 2016 photo of her at the White House with the Obamas. And she's using her social media platforms to call on followers to vote. While trying to rebuild her career, Michele is mentoring other black women and focusing on her mental health. I want people to know that it's okay to expect more from me.' 'While I felt like people took so much away from me in those two years, I'm more grateful for finally having time to look at the last 12' years, since she released her first album, Michele said. Her music, she acknowledges, can't exist in a cultural vacuum.

In the age of social media and partisan politics, it's impossible to separate the artist from the person. Amid the fallout, she told her critics that she is 'no political genius,' but she now recognizes that's irrelevant. Now, Michele is back on stage with a new perspective. The singer who wrote 'Strong Black Woman' wondered if she should just stop singing forever. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and endured a miscarriage that she publicly attributed to stress from death threats and a hydrant of criticism. The 36-year-old lost an album distribution deal and radio stations stopped playing her songs. Instead, it sent her life into a tail spin. She believed the performance would be an opportunity to 'be a bridge' in a fractured nation. She accepted the gig against the advice of her fans, former collaborators and even her husband. It has been two years since Michele made what many predicted would be a career-ending decision - singing at one of President Trump's inaugural balls. The last time she sang at the Keswick, her manager and husband, Doug Ellison, reminisced, nearly all 1,500 seats were filled.Д«ut a few days after Christmas, the die-hard fans clotted near the stage to hear Michele sing were surrounded by a phalanx of empty seats. The Keswick theater in this suburb of Philadelphia sits in a region that is the mecca of the neo-soul music that earned Michele a dozen years of fame, a record deal at 23 and a career-validating Grammy. Chrisette Michele held hands with her band members during a final prayer, posed for a pre-show Instagram photo and stepped out into what remains of a career battered by a five-minute-18-second association with Donald Trump.

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