Monthly Archives: October 2010

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Shakira – Sale el Sol

Last year Shakira suffered her first commercial failure in some time, when her dance-heavy English-language She Wolf album failed to light up the charts.

Now, it seems a bit silly in this era to call 350,000 U.S. copies sold (not to mention 1.5 million worldwide) a disappointment but for an artist who’s sold more than 50 million copies of her previous five albums, I suppose the bar is set a little higher.

Despite its tepid sales, She Wolf was an artistic and critical success, its dance-pop sheen highlighting some of the most indelible melodies and infectious beats of Shakira’s career. But according to whoever writes the rules for pop music, the album has gone down as a failure.

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Song of the Day #828: ‘The Lucky One’ – Alison Krauss

Top Ten Female Vocalists – #9 – Alison Krauss

Most of the women on this list have a voice with some sort of edge or grit, but there are a couple of exceptions and Alison Krauss is the furthest in the other direction.

Krauss’ voice is so smooth and pure, it makes me think of a cool lake so still it looks like a mirror, or a crystal goblet you flick with a fingernail and hear echoing through a big empty house for five minutes. It’s an unreal sort of beauty, a thing that feels almost too perfect to be human.

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Song of the Day #827: ‘Smile’ – Lily Allen

Top Ten Female Vocalists – #10 – Lily Allen

Following two weeks of my favorite male vocalists, I’m now turning my attention to the women. Same rules apply… these are artists whose voices are one of the main reasons I listen to them.

You won’t see somebody like Lucinda Williams here, even though she’s one of my favorite artists and I love the way she sings her songs… her voice isn’t a big enough part of what makes her special to me.

I found this list far easier than the male list to compile. I rattled the ten women featured here off the top of my head in seconds, while I had to struggle to come up with ten men. And I’m leaving women off of this list who I thought would have made it, but the competition was too stiff.

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Song of the Day #826: ‘Alison’ – Elvis Costello

In 1976, a 22-year-old Elvis Costello took a sick day from his job as a computer operator and holed up in a London studio with a band called Clover to record one of the great debut albums in rock history, My Aim is True.

The album wasn’t a huge commercial hit, but it was a critical smash. This weird-looking guy with Buddy Holly glasses and a pigeon-toed punk stance could jump from New Wave pop to Bacharach-style ballads in the course of a few songs. Right off the bat he was hard to peg.

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Song of the Day #825: ‘Welcome to the Working Week’ – Elvis Costello

So how does one follow 10 months worth of Bob Dylan Weekends? In my case, I go to another one of my absolute favorite artists, and perhaps the only songwriter in my collection who rivals Dylan in terms of output and lyrical dexterity.

Welcome to Elvis Costello Weekends!

Born in London in 1954 as Declan Patrick MacManus (talk about a name begging to be changed), Costello released his first album at 23 and went on to have one of the most diverse and fascinating careers in popular music. He has tried his hand at every conceivable genre, from punk to country, chamber music to opera. I await his rap album any time now.

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