09 April 2011

Musical Crack

It seems that most of the time when a song gets stuck in your head, it's something awful.  Like a TV theme song.  Like the theme to "I Dream of Jeannie."  Or "Bewitched."  Try to get both of those playing in your head at once....You're welcome.  You might want to have a couple of Extra-Strength Tylenol on hand.

Anyway, I've been vexed by a song for several days now.  It is now the official musical equivalent of crack:

I cannot get this out of my head.  The percussion is hypnotic.  But it's Adele's voice that just tears it.  There's some wicked power in that vocal instrument.  Wow!

This got me thinking about the strong female broad voices.  I dig them.  So I looked at some of the stuff on my iPod.  Here's a smattering of some of those voices and the songs that charge me up:
  • Adele, "Rolling In The Deep" - enough said
  • Alison Moyet, "Invisible" - frankly anything she does, from her days in Yaz to her solo work or her work on the London stage (she made for a mean prison matron in 'Chicago'), is awesome
  • Annie Lennox, "No More I Love You's" is a great one, but pretty much anything she does is awesome.  See her duet with the next artist (editorial aside - I forgot Ms Lennox in the original post and that's bad.  The stunningly patient and mighty fine SML reminded me of her musical importance).
  • Aretha Franklin, you name it - and her turn in "The Blues Brothers" sealed the strong broad deal
  • Heart, "Alone" - those sisters could wail
  • k .d. Lang, "Constant Craving" - hauntingly strong
  • Stevie Nicks, "Stand Back" - so the scarves have got to go, but the rasp is pretty cool
  • Tanya Tucker, "Strong Enough to Bend" - I know, country, but see the preceding commet re: rasp
  • Toni Childs, "Don't Walk Away" - brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.  
Not an AutoTune (paging Britney Spears) in sight with any of these women.  Just some powerful raw talent.  Music is an amazing thing.  I know the music talent truck passed me by and I suppose that's OK, but if I had to do it all over again, I'd have pursued that one.

1 comment:

Shari said...

I thought Annie Lennox was a favorite too.