Word: songfulness
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...Introducing Joss Stone” should be a relief. Despite its title, this CD has more Soul than either of her prior efforts. The track “Put Your Hands On Me” is a great example of Stone’s updated soul vibe. The song manages to be sultry without relying on cheap tricks—a feat that seems like a miracle in a pop world characterized by Britney’s provocative gasps and Beyoncé’s unbridled sex appeal. “Girl They Won’t Believe It?...
...reissue Murphy’s DFA singles on the second disc, and the first frontloaded the fun, partying a bit too hearty with the opening cuts. Any attempts at sentiment felt artificial. What a difference two years have made. Murphy’s always known how to build a song, but here, every track climbs slowly to its inevitable peak. When the two titular words of opener “Get Innocuous” make their sole appearance in the song, it’s an ineffably perfect capstone to seven minutes’ worth of laser-synth disco. Most...
...fact is, performance is nothing but personal. You get on Idol by singing; you win Idol by telling a story. Some do it through the songs: last year's winner, Taylor Hicks, was a master of that forlorn genre, the cornball story-song (In the Ghetto, Levon). Some make a story arc of their performances, like Clarkson, who grew over Season 1 from wallflower to leather-lunged sensation. Others make themselves the narrative. Season 3 winner Fantasia Barrino, for instance, had the story of teen baby-mamma who made good and subtly underscored it with performances like the soulful lullaby...
...Play is at the root of these songs, which often hinted that they were about something more ribald than their putative topic. "The Fuddy Duddy Watchmaker": "Well I don't know how he does it but he does it!"A song from Red, Hot and Blue, "I Wake up in the Morning Feeling Fine," has Betty in a post-coital afterglow: "It must be cause you kiss me good ev'ry night." (Yes... kiss...
...They were the anthems of a good-time girl who cried out, in the words of "Poppa Don't Preach to Me (The Perils of Pauline): "Let me fling till my fling is all flung." Yet she could also give heart (and soul) to a torch song, like the Pauline ballad "I Wish I Didn't Love You So" ("My love for you / Should have faded long ago"). Simple, sad and beautiful...