Word: songbooks
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Bruce Springsteen has a songbook that reads like a union membership log. He has written about cops, fire fighters, soldiers, road builders, steelworkers, factory laborers and migrant workers. Springsteen himself has held exactly one real job. For a few weeks in 1968 when he was 18, he worked as a gardener. But his gift is not horticulture. His great gift--the one that makes him the best rock 'n' roll singer of his era--is empathy. Springsteen doesn't know what a 40-hour workweek feels like, but he knows how a 40-hour workweek makes you feel...
...retro. Opening next month on Broadway, accompanied by fervent buzz, is Hairspray, based on the campy John Waters movie and featuring ersatz '50s music by Marc Shaiman. Meanwhile, there's hardly a rock star or group from the '60s, '70s or '80s not about to be celebrated in a songbook musical reprising the greatest hits. We Will Rock You, a sell-out hit in London that boasts Robert De Niro among its backers, sets more than 30 songs of the '70s rock band Queen to a jokey sci-fi fable about a future world where live music has been banned...
...Mark Oliver Everett) chooses humor over bathos ("Ma won't shave me, Jesus can't save me," he growls on the superb Dog Faced Boy). Which is not to say he's snide; Friendly Ghost and Woman Driving, Man Sleeping are as sweet as anything in the James Taylor songbook--they're just not saccharine. The lyrics float over an array of power chords, samples, overdubs and scratches--no two songs sound alike--but it's not musical bricolage. Just the best album so far this year...
...Away with Me, arrived in stores in late February, her mythology was more famous than she was. In addition to having a Star Is Born signing, Jones is the daughter of sitar icon Ravi Shankar. Add that she's young and beautiful, with a lush voice and an eclectic songbook, and you have got a full-blown case of music-industry buzz. Rolling Stone and ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY named her one of the top new artists of 2002, and she landed a coveted spot on the Tonight Show the day after her record was released. "I'm freaking out," says Jones...
...Remember" (1925) Ella Fitzgerald (1958) on "Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Irving Berlin Songbook." Berlin's dirge of romantic betrayal - the we-had-sex-now-you're-gone mode reworked by Goffin and King in "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" - gets a beautiful, post-virginal reading by Fitzgerald. Compare this with Billie Holiday's version: she loved, she lost, she doesn't give a shit...