Monsieur Elton John says it best, " so you can tell everybody / this is your song", from his classic Songbook and I could not be more grateful to him for in his words my essay collection, in its interdependence on music and the written word, gets nuanced, sharpened in its elegance and overall era -traversing yodel right through 2018. YOUR SONG is the universal sound of musical artfulness and simplicity and it's the gift of the gab dripping from Elton's betokened songwriting partner and legend Bernie Taupin that counts in a lyrical jungle of egos and I - Me- Myself drumrolls. In the backdrop of dual collections of newly minted tributes to him this year by some of the most resonant names, my words too get refurbished as a plethora of talents make the sign of the times absolutely worthwhile. Below are the songs furthering tidings of good days ahead, right in the middle of our spring awakenings. As you can see, few of these were released in the later months of 2017 but then we are just four months into this new quarter and the extensions have to last as no particular time line determines good music and least of all such a recent chronology which goes hand in hand with contributions from artists old and new.
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REMEMBER ME by JENNIFER HUDSON
I will be honest here: as much as I knew about the singing and performing phenomenon that is Hudson, I had not heard her own records besides few selected live renditions of unmitigated glory and her definitive American Idol audition. You know she has this aura which lingers in the busy stratospheres of popular culture and so one point will most definitely come when one's encounter with her glorious, standalone VOICE will be of staggering proportions. The last quarter of the previous year exposed me to her gorgeous, legendary voice and as I have written in the previous essay, with BURDEN DOWN, she came to symbolise the kind of artistic integrity that lets us separate wheat from chaff, in the sense of separating a perception of true talent from the reality in which her vocation sang with the force and fervor we deserved as connoisseurs.
REMEMBER ME is all that force and fervor that she manages to rustle with trained precision befitting the mood of this number. When she intones, " so, do you remember me/ in the moments just before you sleep?, " she holds fort not as a one note weakling reeling in the past/recent past but as a fierce presence who is almost issuing a harmless little threat of sorts or notice for memory's sake alone. It's as if she is cornering him to a confession but really is a good articulation of that wrestling with our spirits when we seek unresolved answers to fundamental bondings. Hudson has the vocal chops to bring that intensely personal touch to it. Immediately, in the same chorus, she sings" promise me / that it doesn't make your heart beat" and her determined call to stoke memories of a bond that may be open for some closure, dialogue or survival mixes the all too human idea of empathy owing to a deep connection with someone. The crux is not to end it in acrimony.
Piano notes and the use of drums to go essentially with a dance rhythm all fall together seamlessly to relate to the restless state of mind it addresses yet it lets us notice the control in production that duly charts the softer patches with the obsessive contours and pace of the mindscape. However for me, the vocal part in the second verse where she goes for a sudden upper squeal in the lines, " that's no place I'd rather be" is, hands down, the winner. REMEMBER ME is the perfect showcase for the huge personality of Oscar and Grammy winner JENNIFER HUDSON. She is a voice to trust and reckon with.
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TELL ME YOU LOVE ME by DEMI LOVATO
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A LETTERED SOUL: REFLECTIONS ON LITERATURE, CINEMA AND CULTURE .
SachbücherI have often wondered about the very curdled natures of our opinions so much so that the perch of imagination simply becomes a bystanding abstraction and real thoughts of genuine merit slip between the fingers. That is a human tendency, to beat arou...
