Atlanta's CommUNITY choir offers singers career advice — and their favorite songs from decades past

Caption

Deanna Dixon at Hitquarters Studio in Atlanta in January 2025.

Credit: Deanna Dixon / Facebook

Participating in music is a way to relieve stress and isolation. And in uncertain times, familiar songs offer comfort.

Over the past decade, amid the tumult of politics overload and COVID-19, strangers gathering to sing hit songs from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s became a worldwide trend.

One new choir in Atlanta is betting on that pay-to-sing model — with the extra perk of building bonds that last more than a day.

At a nondescript office tower near Perimeter Mall, a 60-member chorus swayed inside the candy-colored Hitquarters Studio. The vibe was jubilant — and the singers? They’re strangers who auditioned online for the CommUNITY ATL Choir.

Deanna Dixon is a former Uber driver who went viral in 2023 for her dashcam singing videos. Her resume includes performing as a backup singer for Beyonce at the Oscars and touring with Kanye West’s Sunday Service Choir.  She said she moved away from Los Angeles to be near family, create a better life for her daughter and to build a "safe haven" for professional and amateur singers.

She believes divine inspiration made it happen.

"This was all a setup," she said. "To take all of my life experiences from being in a choir, from having to do side hustles just to make it, from me trying to find my love again for music after seeing how being a full-time musician affected my daughter. And that was a little traumatizing for me and trying to define the balance of being a mom and being a dreamer. And I was able to use all of this experience, all of these hardships to now coach a room filled with people that aspire to be in some of the same rooms that I've been in and also to help them think outside of the box."

Joining the choir is akin to a gym membership to exercise both your voice and life skills, with varying membership fees to participate in weekly performance sessions, receive coaching, and make music industry connections. There are special guests and solo performance by members. Singers also appear in the choir's videos that receive millions of views on social media platforms like TikTok (where Dixon is known as "The Rideshare Queen"), Instagram and YouTube. There is an audition process of sorts, and learning musical arrangements in a three-hour Monday night session without sheet music requires musical acumen.  

While the CommUNITY ATL website makes it clear the organization is a money-making venture, there is also a "donate now" button to support the choir. Dixon told GPB that paperwork was underway to designate a separately affiliated nonprofit arm for the organization to contribute to other causes. 

At a CommUNITY ATL performance session in January, participant Tacarya Dotson told GPB he sought professional connections and the bonds that singing in a choir yields.

"I have recorded music, but I haven't put anything out, so [the choir] is another way for me to get back into just being a part of a community, getting my voice heard," he said.

Dotson began attending a few weeks after Dixon launched the choir in November 2024.

In the age of streaming, few songs rise up to the level of being familiar across generations. That's where the appeal of joining a choir that sings popular songs from the pre-internet era has its perks. Recent sessions by the singing group include "As" by Stevie Wonder, "Can We Talk" by Tevin Campbell, and "I Will Always Love You" by Whitney Houston. But tonight inside the studio, the singers are perfecting an arrangement of the 1991 ballad “Stay” from Charlotte, N.C., R&B group, Jodeci, directed by Hitquarters Studio owner Ronald Wilson.

From the back row of the alto section in front of the live band accompaniment, the experience was electric.

Choir singing has long been associated with benefits for both the brain and body, with recent studies focusing on music's effects on recovering from burnout. Community choirs are typically free, but paying to sing is also a popular trend, where traveling pop-up sessions with music tours such as Choir! Choir! Choir! (whose motto is "Why watch the show when you can be part of it?") and Pub Choir fill venues with thousands of people.

• WATCH: Choir! Choir! Choir! sing TLC's "Waterfalls" in Atlanta in 2019.

But Dixon, who has worked a variety of jobs in pursuit of her own vocal career, hopes the CommUNITY ATL Choir is more than just a new business model.

"I think music is one of the most powerful tools to help heal and calm a broken heart — I've just seen it's so transformative," she said. "If you're in a bad mood, what do you do? You play your favorite song. When you're sad, what you do? You play you favorite sad song. So it's like music has the power to change almost any mood. And I think with the things that we can't control, what we can control is what we listen to."