Word: chapman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Radio: This season, that most ubiquitous form of summer lite entertainment has brought such offerings as Mariah Carey's paean to true love, "Always Be My Baby," and the previously mentioned incessant dance mixes. Beside that, we have also gained the latest release by Tracy Chapman, a talented artist with a small and dedicated following who had finally made her first foray in years to return to a larger, mainstream audience...
Perhaps it is only the marketing maze of summer media, but there was something less driven about her latest release, something that sounded less driven and more, well, produced. Calculated. Chapman's latest release sounds like her first one, put through a blender to average the overall "Chapman sound," and then poured into a CD mold. The problem is, generic Tracy isn't Tracy at all. One of the things that made her earlier albums so compelling was their inconsistencies, the exquisitely different points they were able to access, like so many different facets on a diamond pressurized into shape...
...predict which works of art will provoke what sorts of desperate acts? Mark David Chapman was clutching The Catcher in the Rye when he murdered John Lennon. Three years ago, a movie called The Program gave several teenagers the notion that it might be worth their while to lie down in the middle of a busy highway. But if you're a bored, unbalanced person in need of inspiration, Oliver Stone's 1994 film Natural Born Killers--in which Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis go on a murder spree and win fame for their efforts--may be a natural-born...
Seal's show was not only a high point in his career and for Unplugged, it was also a noteworthy moment for today's pop. The sound of folk is making a comeback, from the resurgent Tracy Chapman's unexpected Top 10 CD, New Beginning, to the folk-punk punch of Ani DiFranco. In his Unplugged set, the musically eclectic Seal (according to him, his favorite albums right now include Stereolab's involving art-pop CD, Emperor Tomato Ketchup; D*Note's politically aware dance album, Criminal Justice; and Henryk Gorecki's avant-garde classical CD, Symphony No. 3) managed...
CASHING A REALITY CHECK Earthy-voiced troubadour TRACY CHAPMAN has long cast herself as a rootsy folk heroine. Trouble is, she's always preferred to keep her distance from real-life record-buying folk. In concerts, even the most ardent acclaim left her stonefaced and unmoved. Much of her time was spent holed up in her San Francisco mansion. Fans eventually repaid the favor: Chapman's last two albums sank with nary a trace. Well, the reality check has finally arrived. Chapman now reads fan mail aloud in concerts. The new style is helping: last week her latest album...