[Dixielandjazz] Popular Music is Changing

[Stephen Barbone]

Not OKOM. Also LONG. But, for those interested in the direction that
music is taking in the USA today,, this is an interesting read. Many
parallels between this emerging trend in Pop Music and the earlier
trends in OKOM.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the pendulum is swinging back towards melody?

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


November 28, 2003 - New York Times

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK

Old Songs Revisited by Voices of Today

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

One way to draw the map of popular music in the new millennium would be
to divide the world into two volatile, interacting territories. One, the
world of pop for grown-ups, is a land of song where the sunsets are
dramatic and the pace is leisurely. The other, younger world is a
defiant nation under a groove, a fast-food franchise in which tornado
watches are announced daily.

Every pop record, of course, borrows elements from both sides. The most
aggressive rap hit still carries a suggestion of song structure, and the
dreamiest pop ballad has a time signature, even if the beat is faint.
Despite communication between the two worlds (often carried on in the
form of remixes, which can pump hard rhythm into just about anything),
they have never been further apart than they are today.

The distance between them has allowed a resurgence of a pop classicism
that sees the past in a new light. The old generation gap between rock
and pre-rock music has given way to a new and even wider one, with
hip-hop and metal and their assorted hybrids on one side, and everything
else on the other.

A flurry of recent standards albums by artists identified with rock and
soul blurs the old distinctions between music made before and after
1960. As "American Idol" has demonstrated in its tacky way, pre-rock
standards like "Over the Rainbow" and golden oldies like "Respect" are
increasingly seen as pretty much the same thing. Today, the most famous
songs of the Gershwins, Richard Rodgers, the Beatles, Motown, Burt
Bacharach, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Sting share an uneasy artistic
parity.

You have only to listen to two of the year's most satisfying adult pop
albums, Michael McDonald's "Motown" (Motown) and Barbra Streisand's
"Movie Album" (Columbia), to sense the changes. Both recordings are
vocal tours de force that extend the repertory of popular standards into
the rock and soul era.

And who knew until recently that that rusty-voiced rock roustabout, Rod
Stewart, had a fondness for vintage American standards? The newer of his
two best-selling collections, "As Time Goes By: The Great American
Songbook, Volume II" (J Records), includes 14 pre-rock songs arranged in
a bland, bouncy ballroom-dancing style with a British music hall flavor.
The record, whose tempos never really slow down, includes breezy duets
with Queen Latifah ("As Time Goes By") and Cher ("Bewitched, Bothered
and Bewildered"). Mr. Stewart croons them in a high, croaking half-voice
reminiscent of Billie Holiday in her final years, but without Holiday's
jazz phrasing and interpretive depth. Whether or not you like these two
albums (and I don't much), Mr. Stewart at least deserves credit for
perpetuating the lives of songs that have at least as good a shot at
longevity as "Maggie May" and "Tonight's the Night."

Other recent collections of standards by singers who have never gone
there before find Michael Bolton (also at half-voice), Aaron Neville (as
twirly-gospelly as ever), Boz Scaggs (swinging agreeably with a small
pop-jazz group) and Cyndi Lauper digging into the past.

The best of these is Ms. Lauper's "At Last" (Epic), whose far-reaching
repertory ranges from "Makin' Whoopee" (a duet with Tony Bennett) to
Motown ("You've Really Got a Hold on Me"). The quirky chamber pop
arrangements showcase Ms. Lauper as a smart, offbeat kook (the nostalgic
version of her "She's So Unusual" persona), and her performances are
intensely committed. The one inconsistency is Ms. Lauper's uncertain
pitch. Half the time, she sounds like a naïve, vocally insecure disciple
of Rickie Lee Jones.

Celebrating Breakthroughs

The McDonald and Streisand albums lead my list of this year's
recommended adult pop albums because they're so beautifully sung. Both
records are late-career breakthroughs from artists who seemed adrift.
Both are forceful reminders that after the song, the voice is still the
thing.

Mr. McDonald's "Motown" is the kind of album that everyone hoped he
would make after leaving the Doobie Brothers but that he held off
recording for two decades. He is one of the few male blue-eyed soul
singers to grasp instinctively the soul man's attitude of impassioned
humility, in which vulnerability is a badge of virility. There has
always been a seam of genuine sorrow and heartbreak in Mr. McDonald's
rich, chocolaty baritone, which shades up into an anguished bark. Here
his voice is pushed to the foreground on the album's 14 songs, all of
them pop-soul standards, including "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"
and "Ain't No Mountain High Enough."

If Mr. McDonald doesn't slam out a home run every time out, his
heart-rending versions of Marvin Gaye's "I Want You" and Stevie Wonder's
"All in Love Is Fair," along with a sly jazzy version of Mr. Wonder's
"Higher Ground," match the originals in power and surpass anything Mr.
McDonald has done. The arrangements refer to the Motown originals
without straining to be copies. This wonderful record reminds you that
the genius of Motown was in finding a seamless blend of song and groove
in which the two sides had equal weight.

Ms. Streisand's "Movie Album" is far and away her most satisfying
recording since "The Broadway Album," released 18 years ago. Since then,
she has demonstrated an unfortunate late-blooming fondness for
saccharine kitsch. For the inspirational album "Higher Ground," she
adopted a tone of hectoring grandiosity. But all that has been radically
softened in "The Movie Album," a well-chosen collection of Hollywood
chestnuts that include the gospel ballad "Calling You," from "Bagdad
Cafe." Ms. Streisand has also pared away many of her mannerisms. Gone
are self-dramatizing gasps and ostentatious sobs, and her whining
nasality is kept to a minimum. The result is revelatory. The pure,
restrained singing on "The Movie Album" is, in a word, beautiful.

The ballad-dominated collection includes three definitive
interpretations: "Wild Is the Wind," "How Do You Keep the Music
Playing?" and a swooning bossa nova version of "I'm in the Mood for
Love." Yes, there's still too much aural gloss for a real sense of
intimacy to be communicated. But this indication that Ms. Streisand has
finally discovered that less is more is very encouraging.

A Selection for Grown-Ups

Here is a selection of other worthy adult pop albums released in the
last year that won't wear out their welcome after one listen. New names
like the singer-songwriters Phil Roy, Damien Rice and Teitur are mixed
in with rock, folk and jazz veterans, many of whom are over 50 and going
stronger than ever. (CD's range in price from $9.98 to $18.98.)

STING: "Sacred Love" (A&M). Sting has done more than anyone else lately
to forge a sophisticated and flexible fusion between world music and
traditional pop without reducing international influences to kitsch
references. The music on "Sacred Love" is dense and swirling, the mood
earnest, the tone spiritual. As always, one of the strongest tools in
Sting's musical arsenal is his gift for simple, repetitive melodic
phrases that stick in your consciousness even as they are put through
sophisticated harmonic changes. If the album has its dull moments, its
high points are thrilling. "The Book of My Life," a fireside meditation
on memory and approaching death, set amid swirling sitars, is as deep
and memorable a song as any Sting
has composed. And in "Whenever I Say Your Name," a soaring
call-and-response duet with Mary J. Blige, the two singers egg each
other on to peaks of enthusiasm.

PHIL ROY: "Issues and Options" (Or). Mr. Roy, who lives outside
Philadelphia, worked as a professional songwriter in Los Angeles for two
decades (he wrote for the movie "Leaving Las Vegas") and had minor hits
for the Neville Brothers and others before beginning his career as a
soloperformer. He is now in his 40's. His emotionally naked singing in a
style midway between folk and soul conveys a piercing honesty. (Imagine
an amalgam of Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen and Jesse Colin Young.) Anyone
can relate to his autobiographical lyrics expressing the spiritual
crisis of someone determined not to succumb to the pervasive nihilism of
the age. He is the rare songwriter who can talk about God without
sounding preachy and doctrinaire. Mr. Roy is a natural melodist and a
gifted arranger whose songs blend folk and pop-soul hooks with echoes of
bossa nova into music that is fairly complex yet entirely accessible.

ANNIE LENNOX: "Bare" (J Records). Ms. Lennox's third solo album almost
matches the achievement of "Diva," her 1992 tour de force of chameleonic
singing and layered production. "Bare," an anguished, introverted
breakup album, is just as lavish. Its finest songs, "The Hurting Time"
and "Honestly," are self-scrutinizing ballads in which this Scottish
singer projects equal measures of vulnerability, imperiousness and
diffidence. "Honestly," in particular, is a sweeping midtempo ballad
that rides on irresistible, shifting dance-floor grooves and has an
internal chorus of overdubbed voices that express the narrator's
conflicting inner thoughts; a bravura pop moment.

DAMIEN RICE: "O" (Vector). This Irish singer-songwriter projects a raw,
undiluted passion whose intensity recalls Jeff Buckley and the Van
Morrison of "Astral Weeks." His song "Delicate" begins as a dreamy
folk-pop meditation for acoustic guitar and strings, then builds into a
cracked half-scream. That unpredictability is typical of his quirky,
asymmetrical songs, which intensify as they go along and sometimes
abruptly break off (as in "Amie"). His potential is extraordinary.

RICHARD THOMPSON: "The Old Kit Bag" (Apart). This venerable British
folk-rocker is as brilliant and sardonic as ever in "The Old Kit Bag,"
which is bit more contemplative and folk-leaning than his recent albums.
The characters in these vignettes include the usual battling lovers and
working-class blokes with their tragicomic inner lives. The strangest
song is the monologue of a cranky misanthrope who dismisses Einstein,
Newton, van Gogh and Charlie Parker — shorthand for every major artist
and scientist who ever lived. The most profound song is the minimalist
life-and-death meditation "First Breath."

LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III: "So Damn Happy" (Southbury). "Much Better Bets,"
the most biting new comic song on a live album that blends recent
compositions with old favorites, sarcastically concludes that the only
true love to be found in his world comes from pets. Others of the newer
songs also find this most astute folkie humorist of the baby boom waxing
nostalgic in "Westchester County" and "The Picture." Even in a gentler
mode, Mr. Wainwright's reminiscences include one or two barbed insights
to make you squirm. In getting his own number, he gets ours, too.

RON ISLEY: "Here I Am: Isley Meets Bacharach" (Dreamworks). Ron Isley, a
founding member of the Isley Brothers and a chip off Sam Cooke's
pop-gospel block, has recorded an opulent, joyful album of Burt
Bacharach songs (11 classics written with Hal David, plus two newer
collaborations with Tonio K.). The tempos are markedly slower than in
the original recordings by Dionne Warwick and others, and the orchestra,
conducted by Mr. Bacharach, glows. The most adventurous number,
"Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," turns the breezy musical boast from
"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" into a freedom anthem in the mode
of Cooke's "Change Is Gonna Come."

CASSANDRA WILSON: "Glamoured" (Blue Note). As is her way, this loamy
voiced pop-jazz-folk singer stretches across many genres to apply her
brooding personal stamp to both original songs and nonoriginals, all
given spare folk-funk arrangements that underscore the earthiness of her
voice. The most memorable cut is a sad, ruminative version of Sting's
ballad "Fragile." She makes Abbey Lincoln's great folk-jazz song "Throw
It Away" a statement of personal liberation. Although the record is
strong and intelligent, it lacks the variety of musical color to be
found in Ms. Wilson's two memorable 90's collaborations with the
producer Craig Street.

LUTHER VANDROSS: "Dance With My Father" (J Records). Before his nearly
fatal stroke, this great pop-soul balladeer made "Dance With My Father,"
his first album ever to find a fruitful balance between the fluffy,
flowery sound of his 80's albums and contemporary hip-hop. If the
atmosphere is still charged with romantic possibility, there's usually a
beat kicking things along. The title song and best cut, written by Mr.
Vandross with Richard Marx, is a touching, detailed personal tribute to
Mr. Vandross's father. The most sumptuous cut is his remake with Beyoncé
Knowles of the Roberta Flack-Donny Hathaway duet "The Closer I Get to
You."

TEITUR: "Poetry and Aeroplanes" (Universal). The songs on the debut
album by Teitur, a singer-songwriter from the Faeroe Islands, mingle
sweetness and wistful whimsy in a style that suggests early Paul Simon
crossed with Stephen Bishop. The airy, gossamer arrangements (produced
by Rupert Hine) and dreamy vocals evoke the reveries of a romantic
troubadour musing out loud as he travels the world. Best songs:
"SleepingWith the Lights On" and "I Was Just Thinking."

SEAL: "Seal IV" (Warner) Although the fourth album by this British
pop-soul singer reteams him with the producer Trevor Horn, whose dense
quasi-symphonic arrangements placed the singer on an oracular pedestal,
that sound has been sharpened on their fourth collaboration. Seal's
post-hippie sensibility is still rooted in a 70's
one-world-living-in-peace ethos typified by the catchy, inspirational
"Get It Together."

KENNY LOGGINS: "It's About Time" (All Time Best Records). The best songs
on "It's About Time," an ambitious midlife summing-up, are three
churning ballads the singer wrote with Richard Marx. "With This Ring" is
a grand, heartfelt wedding song; "I Miss Us" a man's lament to his wife
that the romantic idyll of their courtship has been pre-empted by
children; and "The One That Got Away" a father's poignant plea for
understanding and forgiveness to an angry son from a previous
relationship. On all three, Mr. Loggins's air of eager sincerity, which
sometimes borders on the mawkish, rings true.