It’s appropriate that I’m featuring an Elvis Costello song on Halloween, as I first saw the man in concert in Sunrise, Florida, with my brother-in-law on Halloween night, 1999.
That was his first time in Florida in many years and my first opportunity to see him during the decade I’d been a fan. I’ve since seen him four or five more times but that first one remains the most special (and not just because he went “off mic” to sing his closing number).
Elvis Costello’s follow-up to My Aim is True, 1978’s This Year’s Model, was his first album with The Attractions. Steve Nieve, Bruce Thomas and Pete Thomas would go on to play (in various combinations) with Costello for the rest of his career to date.
Perhaps it was the influence of these new bandmates that unleashed a very different Costello on This Year’s Model than the one on his debut. The album is fast and ferocious, the angriest album by a very angry young man. Its 12 songs clock in at barely 35 minutes. This is the record that earned Costello his reputation as a punk artist, the Bacharach stuff be damned.
Top Ten Female Vocalists – #6 – Tift Merritt
Four of my the ten women on this list are tied to the country genre in one way or another. The first was Alison Krauss and now we have Tift Merritt. I’m not sure why the genre lends itself to this exercise… perhaps because country songs are more likely to feature the voice front and center while rock or pop, say, tend to bury the vocals in the mix?
At any rate, Merritt’s connection to country music is a tenuous one. Her 2002 debut, Bramble Rose, was her most country-influenced record but she quickly began to branch out. 2004’s Tambourine was nominated for a Best Country Album Grammy but was ironically more of a 60s soul record. 2008’s Another Country and this year’s See You On the Moon were even bigger departures, more in the vein of Carole King and Joni Mitchell.
Top Ten Female Vocalists – #7 – Dusty Springfield
Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley represented the old school on my list of favorite male vocalists, and Dusty Springfield has that honor here.
The British Springfield made her most enduring musical contribution with the very American Dusty in Memphis, a seminal album containing wonderful songs written by the likes of Burt Bacharach, Carole King and Randy Newman. That album is my only real exposure to Springfield’s work but, as with Van Morrison’s Moondance, it’s more than enough to make me a huge fan.
Top Ten Female Vocalists – #8 – Natalie Merchant
I’ve always considered Natalie Merchant the female Michael Stipe. She doesn’t rank as high on this list as Stipe did on his mostly because her solo efforts have largely left me cold. That’s not to take away from her voice, which is my focus here, but it does dampen my enthusiasm for her overall.
As for the voice, she has the same mumbly gravelly quality as Stipe and the connection is so firm in my mind that I’ve always assumed that, like Stipe, she hailed from the south when in fact she was born and launched her career in New York.
Meet Me In Montauk 