From Bob Dylan singing Christmas carols, I take the natural next step to focus on Colombian pop singer and belly dance enthusiast Shakira. Sorry to be so predictable.
In fact, today is the start of a Shakira theme week (plus a day) covering the six studio albums Shakira has released since her debut 14 years ago. Too few of my theme weeks have focused on female artists (I believe Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple and Lucinda Williams are it) so I’m looking to remedy that imbalance.
I started the Dylan Weekends series back in the closing days of January. And here we are in the closing days of August, a full seven months later.
It took me that long to explore every studio album Dylan has released so far — 34 of them — while leaving out 20 other albums consisting of either greatest hits, live performances or unreleased tracks.
It is to those albums that I will turn my attention next, specifically the amazing bootleg series that is surely the best project of its sort ever attempted.
Fans who’ve followed Bob Dylan over his five decade (and counting) recording career, as well as non-fans who I’ve subjected to six months (and counting) of Dylan Weekends, know to expect the unexpected. But even the die-hards were likely thrown by Dylan’s most recent release, 2009’s Christmas in the Heart, an album of Christmas standards.
Was this a throwback to his Christian phase? A joke? Another acoustic covers collection along the lines of Good As I Been To You and World Gone Wrong? It was none of the above, or maybe all of the above and something else besides.
In writing about Arcade Fire yesterday, I explored the idea of albums that take awhile to grow on you before completely sinking in and making you a lifetime fan of an artist. I don’t know if that will happen with Arcade Fire, but it’s a definite possibility.
My favorite example of the phenomenon (one I’ve probably alluded to a dozen times on this blog already) is Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels On a Gravel Road.
And on the flip side you have artists who knocked me out on first listen and settled in among my favorites immediately (Ben Folds and Elvis Costello come to mind).
Arcade Fire is once again the band of the moment thanks to their critically-hailed new album, The Suburbs. I’m still not sure whether I’m ready to jump on the bandwagon, though I suspect I should give that album a listen one of these days so I can make up my mind.
I’ve never heard the band’s 2004 debut Funeral, also much-loved by critics, either. My only exposure to Arcade Fire has been through 2006’s Neon Bible, a majestically murky college radio version of a Bruce Springsteen record. I haven’t quite decided if it’s brilliant or boring. After a few more listens recently, I’m leaning toward the former.
