This is not my belated Whitney Houston eulogy. I was unmoved by her passing, as I tend to be by the passing of celebrities.
I believe the last celebrity death that had a real impact on me was Kurt Vonnegut’s, and he was old enough and unhealthy enough that it didn’t come as a major shock. Houston’s death wasn’t much of a shock, either — as with the passing of Amy Winehouse, my first thought upon hearing the news was, “and she seemed so well put-together.”
Today’s Random Weekend selection is making up for a past sin.
When I spent a three weeks last year walking through Bruce Springsteen’s discography an album at a time, I skipped one in order to fit the series into the allotted time frame. That album was We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, Springsteen’s 2006 collection of classic folk songs.
Today, that record gets its due.
My first random selection this weekend is the title track from Fiona Apple’s third (and most recent) album, Extraordinary Machine.
It’s been seven years since this album was released and Apple’s fans are still waiting on new material. This woman certainly can’t be accused of flooding the marketplace. According to a recent tweet by Epic Records CEO L.A. Reid, a new Fiona Apple album is due sometime this year. But I’ll believe that when I see it.
I’ve come across several dozen covers of ‘Make You Feel My Love’ from Bob Dylan’s 1997 album Time Out of Mind, but just about every one of them is described as an Adele cover.
No doubt many, if not most, of those singers believe Adele wrote the song. It’s not as if her version is different from Dylan’s (apart from the vocals, of course) so that covering Adele’s version is somehow different from covering Dylan’s. She was faithful to the original.
The young woman singing in this clip appears to be the driving force behind the shoombabies YouTube channel. She sometimes performs solo, both with and without a guitar, but often is joined by a wide range of accompanying musicians.
In this case, the girl playing guitar isn’t identified and isn’t all that great a guitar player (or at least, her guitar doesn’t sound all that great to me… but maybe that’s more of a tuning issue). And I find that adds to the appeal of the clip.
