Here’s a beautiful song from 2007’s Grammy-winning Raising Sand, a collaboration between Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.
This is the sort of safe, adult contemporary album that Grammy loves to award with its top prize (think Norah Jones, Steely Dan, Adele, Ray Charles, Celine Dion, Santana, Herbie Hancock, Dixie Chicks and the O Brother Where Art Thou? performers in just the last 20 years).
Brad Paisley can do so many things so well.
He’s perhaps the best songwriter around at composing straight-forward love songs (quick, name a more effective recent love song than ‘Then’ or ‘She’s Everything’). He has a great sense of humor that shines through in his albums as well as onstage. He’s a peerless guitar player who surrounds himself with excellent session players to record albums that rock and swing like crazy.
But even given all that, Paisley can still surprise from time to time, and today’s SOTD is a fine example.
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.
If you haven’t paid attention to the comments in the past week or so, you’ve probably missed out on some really nice music clips.
Below is a sampling of everything from Jason Castro covering Leonard Cohen to Jason Mraz covering Kermit the Frog, with a little Alison Krauss, Neko Case and The Matrix thrown in for good measure.
Enjoy.
Meet Me In Montauk 