Like Pink, featured a week ago, Robyn is an unlikely occupant of my music collection. Or maybe I have a previously unrealized penchant for R&B/pop singers with super-short white-blonde hair.
The artist Robyn most reminds me of, based on the one album and one EP of hers I own, is Prince. She has a similar vocal style (evident on this track) and employs a similar fusion of funk and pop balladry. And as with Prince, I find a little of Robyn goes a long way.
The Random iTunes Fairy is stealing a bit of my thunder.
I had planned to feature Elvis Costello next week as part of my musical genome project, and perhaps I still might. But today’s song would have been a perfect selection to demonstrate Costello’s ‘Country Plus’ credentials. I’ll table that discussion until the appropriate time.
Bruce Springsteen’s presence on my list of favorite artists is a relatively recent development. I’ve always appreciated his work, and have held a few of his albums in high esteem, but only in the past year or so have I dived deeper into his catalog and realized the breadth of his talent.
Impressively, Springsteen earned this reassessment by releasing a series of excellent albums over the past seven years. At a time when most artists would be opting for rock-n-roll retirement, he has delivered some of the best work of his career.
Stew (stage name of Mark Stewart) is another of those oddball artists who don’t really fit well into any of my musical genome categories.
Both as a solo artist and with his band The Negro Problem, Stew has explored jazz, punk, avant garde and cabaret. He has written a couple of musicals, one of which (Passing Strange) became both a Tony-winning Broadway play and a Spike Lee movie. He’s really unlike anybody else I listen to.
Initially I wasn’t sure if I should include Dar Williams in the set of artists I’m examing for the musical genome project. I own most but not all of her albums, and I know only a couple of them by heart. She has released her share of generic Lilith Fair soft rock snoozers.
But she has also written and recorded some of the best songs I’ve ever heard. ‘When I Was a Boy,’ for example, is a song I would list among my very favorites, not just for its musical and lyrical qualities but because it speaks to me on a deep emotional level. She can do that, and has, more than a few times.
