Word: folk
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...Bird,” off 2000’s Grammy-winning “Whoa, Nelly!,” Furtado likely could have developed her career solely around her vocal talent and pop style. But in 2003, Furtado chose to abandon pop in favor of less radio-friendly folk music on the tepidly received “Folklore.” For her next album, she tried another route, that of the R&B singer. Collaborating with Timbaland for a series of hip-hop tracks, including the chart-topping “Promiscuous,” Furtado regained star status...
...singles were the thriving format back then, and that's where PP&M shone. They scored six Top 10 hits and placed seven others in the top 40. Travers' strong lead on "Lemon Tree," a Brazilian folk song for which Will Holt had written new lyrics, gave them their first hit. It was followed by Seeger and Lee Hays' "If I Had a Hammer." The group changed the phrase "all my brothers" to the more ecumenical "my brothers and my sisters" and helped make the number an anthem for the decade's civil-rights movement. Their rendition was a highlight...
...mellow rue to his "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," thus spurring a small industry of Dylan covers and easing the singer-songwriter's emergence as his own wiliest interpreter. They had hits with new compositions (John Denver's "Leaving on a Jet Plane") and reworked folk tunes (Hedy West's take on "500 Miles"). Other groups had recorded these songs, but PP&M sold them best, with artfully simple musical settings - and the striking girl in the middle...
Like many folk groups, they found their material by scouring old songbooks and listening attentively to obscure albums on the Folkways and Vanguard labels. One Vanguard trio, the Greenbriar Boys, expressed resentment when PP&M used their arrangement of the English ballad "Stewball" for yet another hit single. But Seeger said he was pleased by PP&M's version of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," which he had adapted from a Cossack lyric (and to which folk singer Joe Hickerson added the final verses). Voilà! One more antiwar ballad to insinuate its thesis into the minds...
Times, they change, in pop music. Dylan went electric; the folk songbook was nearly depleted by raids from the myriad groups that sprung up to grab the gelt; and Peter, Paul and Mary disbanded in the early '70s to pursue solo careers. At the end of the decade the group reunited, "after their rejuvenating years of personal re-definition" (their website's words). Though they kept recording new material, they were essentially an oldies act, appearing with other antique pop-folkies like the Highwaymen and the Brothers Four at concerts that PBS liked to air in prime time during every...