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Brandi Carlile - That Year (live for Last.fm Discover)
Part of me is really hoping Brandi plays this (and/or her cover of Ray Lamontagne’s Burn) when I see her tonight, since you know, it’s a beautiful song and one of my favorites. The other part of me hopes she skips it since it’ll probably make me sad and depressed for the rest of the night, but that part’s lame and has bad taste.
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Loretta Lynn- The Pill
Can we talk about how awesome Loretta Lynn is for a second? I saw her in Nashville this summer, and at age 76, she still puts on a great show. Unfortunately, she didn’t play this song, which is a favorite of mine and one of her biggest hits despite being extremely controversial and banned on many radio stations. For this song and many others such as “Rated X” she should get a lot of credit since she’s one of the only women in popular culture, let alone country music, to express a defiantly feminist outlook, endorsing birth control as a way for women to free themselves at a time when that just wasn’t talked about. Not only does the song have a great message, it’s catchy as hell and features some wonderfully sassy lines delivered with a triumphant and slightly mocking tone in one of Loretta’s most enjoyable vocal performances.
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Tori Amos- Crazy (from Scarlet’s Walk)
So I let Crazy pull me in
Then I let Crazy take his spin
Kicked off my shoes, shut reason out
He said “first let’s just unzip
your religion down,
Heard that you were once
Temptation’s Girl”
Crazy is a song that took me a while to fully appreciate. It didn’t jump out at me on the first or even 10th listen of Scarlet’s Walk because it lacked either the pop hooks of songs like A Sorta Fairytale and Taxi Ride or the epic sweep and stunning instrumentation of tracks like I Can’t See New York or Gold Dust. Once I dug deeper into the album though, it revealed itself as a highlight. The harmonies and vocalizations are top-notch and the multiple layers of vocals envelop the listener, making the song soothing and gentle. The instrumentation has a slight country/Americana feel to it, with the bass and guitar providing a bit of twang and the use of the Rhodes separating it from the usual piano-led Tori Amos sound. I could actually see Lucinda Williams or Emmylou Harris doing a great cover of this song, there’s a maturity to it that would fit their voices well. I know I rag on some of Tori’s production choices on her recent albums and hope she gets an outside producer at some point, but she did a perfect job here. The song has a calming tone, with most of the edges of her vocal smoothed out nicely, but she also manages to create a seductive atmosphere, as well as highlight all the right musical parts at the right time and keep the heavily utilized backing vocals effective instead of overwhelming.
Lyrically, the song isn’t Tori’s most complex work, but there are some excellent bits like the part I quoted above, and
Found that I, I craved at all
Saw me melt into your
native shelter
Where you carved my name
Paper tigers scared me
and came alive
Through the dawn
To the light
Fundamentally, Crazy is a song about being with someone who shakes up your view of the world. He challenges the narrator’s views on sex and religion, and presents ideas that seem dangerous (paper tiger is a Japanese phrase meaning something that appears dangerous but isn’t). Although she always thinks of him as crazy, she opens up her mind/heart and lets him in deeper and deeper. They may separate at the end of the song, but I believe Crazy shows up again in the final segment of the album to feature into the songs Another Girl’s Paradise and Gold Dust, tying the album’s conclusion more tightly to its first half and providing a nice conclusion to the overall narrative.
Dolly Parton - Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?
Dolly’s guitar playing is OFF. THE. CHAIN.
Watch until the end for the best part.
Performances like this are why Dolly deserves her own theme park and museum. She’s charming, funny, kicks ass on the guitar, and delivers effortlessly flawless vocals time and time again. It speaks to how charismatic she is that even though the guys doing backing vocals are also excellent, the entire song you just wish they’d go away so you could hear Dolly better.
