http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoK63Bk7pgw
I won't write an essay here on the topic of gender in music — I'm not nearly well-versed enough, and, frankly, it's been done. I will say that the few female vocalists I do enjoy are generally either Jazz, Trip-Hop, or Rock'n'Roll. There are some genres where I know female vocalists exist, but I don't enjoy them (modern pop, rap, alt-rock, etc). I can probably name only a few female vocalists off the top of my head, actually... Ella Fitzgerald, Blondie, the woman from Fleetwood Mac, Metric (above), The Go! Team...
Oh my god, is that all I can list? I know the names of male singers from named bands (Thom Yorke — Radiohead, etc) but rarely the names of female singers from named bands (... — The Decemberists? I know Colin Meloy.) Oh! Imogen Heap. This still isn't that many.
Doesn't Massive Attack have female vocalists? Guest vocalists. And, uh, Morcheeba, Portishead! All the associated trip-hop acts.
Oh dear.
Showing posts with label ella fitzgerald. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ella fitzgerald. Show all posts
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Let's Call The Whole Thing Off — Ella Fitzgerald + Louis Armstrong
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2oEmPP5dTM
Yesterday morning, before my Calc midterm, one of the guys who sits near me piped up: he'd been going through a breakup; he'd been studying for midterms; things were bad, and this song roused his spirits. He said: there's a part near the end (3:16) where Louis Armstrong just shouts 'tomahter' in the silliest way.
So we're in this math classroom at 9am, with my stomach churning and my head pounding and a math midterm before me: and suddenly the entire class including the teacher is doing Louis Armstrong impressions, shouting tomahter at the top of our lungs.
Yesterday morning, before my Calc midterm, one of the guys who sits near me piped up: he'd been going through a breakup; he'd been studying for midterms; things were bad, and this song roused his spirits. He said: there's a part near the end (3:16) where Louis Armstrong just shouts 'tomahter' in the silliest way.
So we're in this math classroom at 9am, with my stomach churning and my head pounding and a math midterm before me: and suddenly the entire class including the teacher is doing Louis Armstrong impressions, shouting tomahter at the top of our lungs.
Monday, March 4, 2013
Counting Crows — St. Robinson In His Cadillac Dream
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6SEVMhwShQ
Whenever I talk about music with anyone over the age of about thirty, the idea of tonal shift always comes up: most music today has a great divide between the tone of its music and the tone of its lyrics. Modern music can be poppy and upbeat, and discuss sadness and loss. Often it's slow and sad but has hopeful and uplifting lyrics. The theory is that this is a new development, and I'm inclined to agree — it's hard to picture Ella Fitzgerald pulling this trick, (although not as hard to picture Sinatra); but Opera, Soul, Blues, R+B, modern Musicals, Rock 'n' Roll, not even Rap ever has real cognitive dissonance Yet modern Rock, and especially Alternative (call it Indie, whatever) does this a lot.
St. Robinson in His Cadillac Dream is the button song on the Counting Crows' 1999 album This Desert Life; a wonderful, flawed, expert rendition of Americana pop mixed with shoegaze. Yet it's a prime example: a sad, melancholy song put to poppy, heightened banjo, organ, and guitar. It leaves echoes of... uncertainty?
A wonderful example is The Cure, although I'm not sure that they began the trend — Plainsong is Robert Smith going off to write a secret love letter to his wife, shrouded in the timbre of the previously dark stuff The Cure had done earlier in the 80s. It became massively popular, an all-consuming emotional statement, as Pitchfork so puts it.
It sounds sad, but it's deeply happy. St. Robinson pulls the same trick. Most modern indie music pulls the same trick.
But why?
Whenever I talk about music with anyone over the age of about thirty, the idea of tonal shift always comes up: most music today has a great divide between the tone of its music and the tone of its lyrics. Modern music can be poppy and upbeat, and discuss sadness and loss. Often it's slow and sad but has hopeful and uplifting lyrics. The theory is that this is a new development, and I'm inclined to agree — it's hard to picture Ella Fitzgerald pulling this trick, (although not as hard to picture Sinatra); but Opera, Soul, Blues, R+B, modern Musicals, Rock 'n' Roll, not even Rap ever has real cognitive dissonance Yet modern Rock, and especially Alternative (call it Indie, whatever) does this a lot.
St. Robinson in His Cadillac Dream is the button song on the Counting Crows' 1999 album This Desert Life; a wonderful, flawed, expert rendition of Americana pop mixed with shoegaze. Yet it's a prime example: a sad, melancholy song put to poppy, heightened banjo, organ, and guitar. It leaves echoes of... uncertainty?
A wonderful example is The Cure, although I'm not sure that they began the trend — Plainsong is Robert Smith going off to write a secret love letter to his wife, shrouded in the timbre of the previously dark stuff The Cure had done earlier in the 80s. It became massively popular, an all-consuming emotional statement, as Pitchfork so puts it.
It sounds sad, but it's deeply happy. St. Robinson pulls the same trick. Most modern indie music pulls the same trick.
But why?
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