Artist: Billie Holiday
Album: Lady in Satin
Year: 1958
Back in college I took a course on Politics in Music. We studied various artists whose music had degrees of overt and covert political intent. Throughout the course we looked at Bob Dylan, the Sex Pistols, Gil Scott-Heron, and many others. The very first artists we studied was none other than Billie Holiday.
Holiday was a blues artist well-known for her impassioned vocals and distinctive voice. Lady in Satin was recorded toward the very end of Holiday's life, a kind of swansong performance that many have admired in the years since its 1958 release. Myself, I've never really been fond of Holiday's bluesy voice. I find it undoubtedly expressive, but there's something I don't quite "get," something in her phrasing maybe just seems off. For a modern comparison, check out Macy Gray--who some people love, but I absolutely detest.
In my opinion, Lady in Satin features Holiday at her absolute worst. I didn't care for her voice before, but on this release she just sounds awful. You can feel the emotion of her performance on cuts like "I'm a Fool to Want You" and "Glad to be Unhappy" but her voice is gravely, rangeless, and faltering.
So here's the surprising thing: I thought this was a good album practically for that reason alone. Here is a legendary artist, a shell of her former self, performing classic standards that twenty years prior she would've belted out effortlessly, struggling her way through this set. It's sad, but it's like a train wreck. You want to shut it out but just can't turn away. You question whether Lady Day will actually survive to finish the album (she does indeed). It's strangely compelling stuff, nothing I'd ever seek out to listen to again, but I can see why the legend of this album has grown leaps and bounds since its debut 54 years ago.
Rating: Worth a listen
No comments:
Post a Comment