Posts Tagged ‘This Girl’s in Love’

Today’s Top 5: Curated Classics

Posted: January 2, 2017 in 1960s, 1969, 1970s, 1975, 2010, 2010s, 2016, Dusty Springfield, Emmylou Harris, Harriet, Rumer, Top 5
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Life unfurls like a flag on a windy day. Though it may seem that the cloth never ripples the same way twice, over time certain patterns can be discerned. For example, just like last year about this time, one of my first self-appointed chores of 2017 consisted of digging through the dusty virtual bins of Amazon in search of the perfect CDs to send my niece for her birthday. “Perfect” takes on a double meaning in this context – perfect for her and perfect, overall.

As last year, I used Amazon’s free gift tags to include short notes about each album.

dusty_memphis1) Dusty Springfield – “I Can’t Make It Alone” (from Dusty in Memphis, 1969). I wrote: “Although it didn’t sell well in 1969, this album is now considered a classic. It blends pop and soul in a way that no one had before; and Dusty’s vocals are wondrous.” I’d add: Make that a stone-cold classic; and luscious in addition to wondrous. Rolling Stone ranked it No. 89 on its 2012 list of the Top 500 Albums of All Time; I rank it higher – possibly Top 10. It smolders, yearns and burns, and sounds as fresh to my ears now as it did when I first heard it in the early 1980s.

emmylou_pieces2) Emmylou Harris – “For No One” (from Pieces of the Sky, 1975). I wrote: “Although she’s rarely topped the charts, Emmylou is an integral artist within the modern history of country music. This, her second try at a debut, explains why.” I’d add: Emmylou embraced and made her own the expansive “Cosmic American Music” vision of Gram Parsons, her musical mentor, who passed away in September 1973, on this classic from 1975. In essence, she helped forge the foundation that generations of female country and folk performers, including Taylor Swift and First Aid Kit, have built upon since.

harriet3) Harriet – “Broken for You” (from her eponymous debut, 2016). I wrote: “I discovered this gem on Christmas. Although the songs conjure the Carpenters and pop music of the 1970s, Harriet is a relatively new 20-something singer from London. It should make you smile.” I’d add: This set certainly makes me smile, at least. If I’d been aware of it when I created my Albums of the Year list in early December, I would have ranked it No. 3. It’s everything that’s good about pop music.

rumer_soms4) Rumer – “Aretha.” (from Seasons of My Soul, 2010). I wrote: “This is an atmospheric song cycle that’s teeming with soulful, knowing lyrics & melodies that wrap themselves around the heart. Among its themes: love, longing, loss & acceptance. It’s magic.” I’d add: I borrowed part of that from my first blog post on the Hatboro-Horsham Patch, since moved here; I’ve also written about it here and here. I rank it among my Top Albums of All Time, which I plan to share at some point later in the year.

rumer_vinyl5) Rumer – “This Girl’s in Love With You” (from This Girl’s in Love: A Bacharach & David Songbook, 2016). I wrote: “Burt Bacharach is a legendary songwriter who, with collaborators such as Hal David, crafted some of the world’s greatest songs. This set from Rumer was my Album of the Year for 2016.” For more, see my Album(s) of the Year, 2016 and Today’s Top 5: The Promise of Tomorrow posts. (By the way, that’s Bacharach singing at the start.)

 

Album(s) of the Year, 2016

Posted: December 4, 2016 in 2010s, 2016, Album of the Year, Burt Bacharach, Diane Birch, Hal David, Neil Young, Rumer, Rylie Bourne, Sarah Jarosz
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And so the year comes to a close not with a bang or whimper, but a melody that’s older than my time on Earth: “What the World Needs Now Is Love.”

Jackie DeShannon’s rendition of that Bacharach-David classic, Wikipedia tells us, was released as a single on April 15, 1965; and, according to Weekly Top 40, it entered the Top 10 on July 3rd and peaked at No. 7 three weeks later. It’s a song that’s been sung by hundreds of singers since, including Rumer on her new This Girl’s in Love: A Bacharach & David Songbook album. Somewhere there’s war, somewhere there’s heartache and somewhere some people hate while others fear. It’s not fair. It’s never fair. But it’s why the song resonates when it’s sung. It’s always true. The world needs love. Sweet love. Not for some. For everyone.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Old Grey Cat’s “Album of the Year” award is not an honorific doled out lightly. The selection process – which I began in 1978 at age 13 – is quite simple: I deep-dive into the music that riveted me during the previous 12 months, whittle down the choices to a few candidates and pick my Album of the Year from them. But this year? There was no need. To quote myself from 2014:

“Sometimes you just know – call it love at first listen. The first notes of the first song seep from the speakers with the grace of an Audrey Hepburn or the grit of a Humphrey Bogart and, well, that’s that. Without listening to the rest, you know that this is it, the one, the set of music that will fill the soundtrack of your life not just for the foreseeable future, but for the rest of it.”

Except, in this instance, I knew long before the first notes sauntered from the speakers. But, again, I’m getting ahead of myself. (Let’s call it “building suspense.” Ha!)

ryliebourneFirst, a caveat: Rylie Bourne’s self-titled debut album was and remains among my favorite discoveries of 2016; it would easily make my Top 5 for the year save for the fact that it wasn’t released in 2016, but late 2015. As I explained in this post, “It’s country music the way country music should be, of the soul and heart. It conjures the Carter Family, Merle Haggard and the outlaw sound. At times, it’s light; more often, however, it’s dark and cathartic – think Hank Jr.’s Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound (minus the orneriness).” If you haven’t sought it out, you should. Here’s a taste:

And one more caveat: Neil Young’s Peace Trail is due out on Dec. 9th, five days from now. It could, conceivably, eke its way into a top spot, given that “Indian Givers” – released a few months back – is damn good.

There’s little chance that the album will eke its way into my Top 3, however; those have been set in stone since Thanksgiving night. Because of Peace Trail, however, I’m not going to breakdown what falls where within Numbers 10 to 4, as they’re all (fairly) equal to my ears and could get bumped down a notch (and/or out of the Top 10): Alicia Keys’ Here; Bat for Lashes’ The Bride; Blake Babies’ Earwig Demos; Emily Jane White’s They Moved in Shadow All Together; Neil Young’s Earth; Norah Jones’ Day Breaks; and, at my wife’s urging, Van Morrison’s Keep Me Singing.

And, with all that acknowledged, onward to the year’s Top 3:

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3) Sarah Jarosz – Undercurrent. What an amazing album. The singer-songwriter’s guitar playing reminds me of Stephen Stills – magic is made with every pluck and strum. Her vocals, though a different shade and texture, conjure Shawn Colvin’s; and the songs…as I’m apt to say, “Wow. Just wow.” Here’s a 10-minute Attics Sessions video of the Texas native:

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2) Diane Birch – Nous + “Nite Time Talking.” The Church of Birch pastor began the year with the intoxicating Nous. In my review, I wrote that the set is “atmospheric, restrained and moody, accented by muted vocals and figurative wisps of smoke swirling from speakers. The music smolders, in other words, and conjures an assortment of current and classic recordings – from Anna Calvi and Bat for Lashes to David Bowie and Pink Floyd – while retaining its own unique sound.”

“Nite Time Talking,” a one-off single released on Bandcamp at the end of November, is equally seductive and dreamlike.

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1) Rumer – This Girl’s in Love: A Bacharach and David Songbook. Was there any doubt? As I said above, sometimes you just know; and I knew in August of 2015, when Rumer announced her plan to record an album of Bacharach-David songs. That voice with those songs?! It’s a match made in heaven. However, the end result is even better than anticipated. To tweak what I wrote a few weeks back, it’s a lilting and lush set that possesses the grace of Audrey Hepburn, soul of Dusty Springfield and finesse of the 5th Dimension.

In other words, it blows my mind every time I listen to it (and I’ve listened to little else since its release). Here’s another highlight – with a vocal cameo by none other than Burt Bacharach, who also plays piano on the track:

 

Today’s Top 5: The Promise of Tomorrow (circa 1970 & Billboard)

Posted: November 26, 2016 in 1960s, 1970, 1970s, B.J. Thomas, Diana Ross, Dusty Springfield, Edwin Starr, Elton John, Good Girls Revolt, Petula Clark, Rumer, Simon & Garfunkel, The 5th Dimension, The Carpenters, The Guess Who
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Thanksgiving night, after a wonderful get-together with family, Diane and I continued our trek through Good Girls Revolt. One episode centered on New Year’s Eve of 1969: As the ‘60s came to an end, Patti (Genevieve Angelson) and editor Finn (Chris Diamantopoulos) concluded that the decade had been about suppression and repression; the ‘70s, they predicted, would be about expansion. Then, at about 10:50pm, I received a message from iTunes: Rumer’s This Girl’s in Love: A Bacharach and David Songbook was available for download.

It’s a lilting and lush set; the music possesses the grace of Audrey Hepburn, soul of Dusty Springfield and vocal finesse of the 5th Dimension, if that makes sense, and evokes the era in which the songs were born while remaining firmly rooted in the present. While one can imagine Rumer singing, say, “One Less Bell to Answer” on The Tonight Show in 1969, one can also imagine her swaying to the same music on The Tonight Show next month. At its best, music transcends time and space; and this set does just that.

Anyway, the juxtaposition of Good Girls Revolt and This Girl’s in Love (and, perhaps, too much turkey) led me to reflection – and to the realization that Patti and Finn, in their rush to pass judgment on the ’60s, were wrong. The decade was not a time of suppression or repression. To the contrary. It was a time when the collective American mindset pushed past a centuries-old prejudice (race) and began to do the same with another (gender). That’s not to say prejudice was eliminated; far from it. But the majority of folks realized it was wrong.

Consider this clip from Petula, a TV special starring British pop singer Petula Clark that aired on NBC on April 2, 1968:

The moment near the end, when Petula puts her arm on Harry Belafonte’s? Believe it or not, it spurred a controversy. A vice president of Chrysler, which was sponsoring the show, demanded that another take be used due to the “interracial touching.” Petula Clark and her husband, the special’s producer, said no; NBC sided with them; and the special, when it aired, was a hit. But if that touch had occurred a decade earlier? NBC likely would’ve cut the song or, if not, many TV stations, primarily in the South, would’ve refused to air the show.

That said, despite the decade’s advances, life wasn’t great. Two days after that special aired, for example, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated; two months later, Robert Kennedy was killed; four months later, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago turned violent; six months later, Richard Nixon was elected president; and, all the while, the Vietnam War raged – more than 16,592 American soldiers died and 87,388 were wounded that year.

When we strip the gauzy nostalgia from the reality of any time, we’re left with this: What often made the time wonderful was less day-to-day life and more the promise of what had yet to come. It’s why succeeding generations continue to embrace the music of the ‘60s and ‘70s, I think – despite the tumult of the ‘60s and woes of the ‘70s, the messages that powered much of the music were hopeful. And, by and large, we’re a hopeful lot.

Which leads to today’s Top 5: The Promise of Tomorrow, circa 1970 and Billboard. These are the year’s top singles…

1) Simon & Garfunkel – “Bridge Over Troubled Water”

2) The Carpenters – “(They Long to Be) Close to You”

3) The Guess Who – “American Woman”

4) B.J. Thomas – “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”

5) Edwin Starr – “War”

6) Diana Ross – “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”

And a few singles that didn’t make the year’s top 100:

7) The 5th Dimension – “One Less Bell to Answer”

8) Elton John – “Your Song”

9) Dusty Springfield – “A Brand New Me”

 

The Grace of Audrey Hepburn Set to Song

Posted: November 25, 2016 in 2010s, 2016, Rumer
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The grace of Audrey Hepburn set to song – that, in short, summarizes the latest release from Rumer, This Girl’s in Love: A Bacharach & David Songbook. I’ll have more to say about it in the days ahead, but for now: here’s a very cool behind-the-scenes look at its making…

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