There May Be Hope For Pop Music

I don't write about music much on my blog. I'm as wrapped up in music as any musician can be, but I usually don't find it worthwhile to bitch about bad music and there is just not much good music to write about.

But every once in a long while I run into something unusual that deserves mention, so here we go.

Let me say this first. If there ever was a viral pandemic threatening the art of music it would be the modern POP DIVA.

You know who I'm talking about. Beyonce. Mariah Carey. Ashley Simpson and her brain dead sister. Mousketeers Aguilera and Spears. Made for TV idol Kelly Clarkson. Michael Bolton. (Yeah, just a diva with a package.) Madonna. And the queen of self-absorbed vapidity, Celine Dion. These women do for pop music what Velveeta does for cheese. They make it smooth and creamy and bland and tasteless and so utterly dripping with bad cholesterol. Listen to a Celine Dion album all the way through in one sitting and you take two years off your life. Just like that.

Imagine how NOT excited I was to be turned on to a track that friend of a friend Billy Mann wrote a few years back for yet another pop diva. Imagine how completely jazzed I was to hear a piece that was really great in so many respects. In retrospect, maybe this particular pop diva has a few things going for her that others don't. First, she's a successful artist, but she's not mega-famous. Second - she is fighting breast cancer, so she has some REAL shit to flame out about in her life as opposed to those who throw tantrums over whether or not their dressing room curtains are the right color. And last but not least - she appears to have some soul - that is - the ability to make you believe that she believes what she's singing about.

OK, this song - this is the shit.

It's got the acoustic guitar riff. It's got the funky tabla percussion track. It's got the unexpected vocal stylization. It's got the melody and the harmonies. It's got the lyrics written by and for someone with an IQ higher than a billiard ball number. Hell - it's even got the Cajun instruments and the fucking FIDDLE solo. And it's got something to say. Hallelujah good god almighty.

Don't let me oversell this. This is not a revolution in music of the kind we experienced so often in decades past. This is not the Coltrane or the Basie, the Lennon/McArtney or the Becker/Fagan. This will not spin your head around exorcist style like the first time you heard Sgt. Pepper. It won't leave you wondering how many souls were sacrificed to the devil to come up with the track like, say, Aja did. Nothing like that.

All this is, is an outbreak of hope amidst the viral pandemic.

Do yourself a favor and listen to - "Overdue Goodbye" written by the talented Mr. Billie Mann and performed by the equally talented Anastacia.