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.
All that aside, there is a direct and honest quality to Merritt’s voice that I tend to associate with good country music. What impresses me most about Merritt’s vocals is her ability to deliver both the grit and the beauty depending on the song. If you put Lucinda William’s world-weary croak on one end of the spectrum and Alison Krauss’ crystal-clear delivery on the other, Merritt would fall almost exactly in-between.
Merritt hosts a radio show titled The Spark in which she interviewed favorite artists of hers (in all sorts of fields) to discuss how they conceive and create their work. Her first episode featured novelist Nick Hornby (a big fan of her music, as it turns out) and was a fascinating hour-long conversation between two people who know and love each other’s work and want to learn more about it.
It was interesting to listen to Merritt’s speaking voice for an hour and hear echoes of how she sounds when she sings. A familiar pronunciation here, a favorite turn of phrase there. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve listened to the radio show, but in a very real way her music sounds to me like a conversation. There is an intimacy to her vocals that makes me think she’s not singing into a microphone but directly to whoever is listening.
No one will find but you,
Falling is like brand new rain,
Places I have never been,
I thought these things would come to me.
Love is another country, and I want to go –
I want to go too. I want to go with you. I want to go too. I want to go with you.
But I’m broke down right here.
My heart won’t come out clear.
I get lost on the inside too.
How could I make sense to you?
And when you walk away from me,
You’re farther than another country and I want to go –
I want to go too. I want to go with you. I want to go too. I want to go with you.
If you should lose you place,
This world should hide its face
And go where you can’t follow to,
I will come and look for you,
And you can just hold onto me,
Strangers in another country cause I want to go –
I want to go too. I want to go with you. I want to go too. I want to go with you.
Meet Me In Montauk 
And this was one of those voices that captured you from the moment you first heard it. We’ve all been exposed to opening acts we admired at the moment but didn’t inspire us to the point that we ran out to buy their albums and follow their career.
Tift had you at hello 🙂 And this song demonstrates why – her voice is lovely.
Well, thankfully, your inclusion of Tift (and apparently 3 other country female singers) takes away one of Amy’s arguments in defense of you last night regarding inclusion of black artists (“Well, Clay owns country music but hasn’t included any country vocalists in his top 10”) We both failed to consider your previous inclusion of Krauss.
Anyway, letting the race issue drop, at least for now :), Tift does have a lovely voice. I’m not sure her voice is anything so special outside the context of her own work, but it seems to suit her material quite well In other words, going back to my criteria, would Tift merit (like the pun?) consideration if she were to sing covers or children’s songs? Not sure.
Her voice reminds me a bit of Mary Chapin Carpenter, someone who would merit (there’s that word again!) serious consideration on my top 10 list for the same type of reasons you express here. Of course, Carpenter, being 1/10th black, would never make your list 🙂 (Don;t bother checking on Wikipedia as to whether this fact is true. You won’t find any reference there, but I have my sources:))
She has a lovely voice–good choice.