I like a wiiiide range of music.
I know people say that a lot, but I genuinely appreciate music from the jazz, hip hop, country, rock, punk, ska, r & b, folk, pop, top 40 genres.
From the oh-so-cool garage band you’ve never heard of to the american idol finalist.
But there’s one genre of music that I like that transcends all those genres, and that’s what I like to call “the funny talker”.
It includes Billie Holiday, Josiah Lemming, Amy Winehouse, Raul Midon, Edelle, Sharon Jones the lead singer of Sugarland, Duffy, Amos Lee, Eddie Vedder, Corinne Bailey Rae, David Gray, Ryan Bingham, Al Green, Jason Mraz, Lil Wayne…hopefully you get the idea :)
Recently, I came across two new funny talkers, but only one of them stood out enough to make me click the infamous “buy album” link in iTunes.
Jazmine Sullivan and Madeleine Peyroux
I first came across Madeleine Peyroux while riding in a friend’s car. She had the CoffeeHouse XM Radio station playing, and I thought they were playing Billie Holiday. She pressed the “info” button and it said “Madeline” something. So I typed it into the Notes app on my iphone and looked it up when I got home.
I found the correct name on iTunes (and YouTube) right away, and she is an amazing singer. As many people probably have written about her, it’s uncanny how much she sounds like Billie Holiday. The problem for me was that while I love me some Billie Holiday, I couldn’t get over someone new sounding *so much* like her. I listened to a few snippets, but I couldn’t click that “buy album” button.
Then today I came across Jazmine Sullivan after someone on Twitter posted a reply mentioning Heavy D was on Twitter. So I checked out Heavy D’s Twitter page and from there I saw that The Fat Boys were on Twitter (old school hip hop). I clickety clicked the Fat Boys homepage and heard one of those annoying music players auto-playing. But since I had my headphones on, and I was nostalgic for some Fat Boys, I let it play. One of the tracks was a remix of “bust your windows” by Jazmine Sullivan.
Right away, I could hear the funny talking in her voice. This particular track had an Amy Winehouse flavor, but it was still unique. I headed over to YouTube to listen to a few more tracks and what stood out was that her voice was like a unique mix of so many artists: Amy Winehouse/Lauryn Hill/Mary J Blige/Alicia Keys/Sharon Jones with a sprinkle of something else that made it uniquely Jazmine Sullivan.
I listened to a few snippets of tracks on iTunes, walked away, and finally came back and clicked that “buy album” button. I figured I’d give her a shot and hope that the full album would be worth it. It was. To be honest, I’m not a big fan of just pure R&B singers…after listening to a few, they all start to sound alike. But on this album, there’s so many different styles, and she uses her voice in so many different ways, it kept up the flow through all 13 tracks.
I’m not gonna lie, I’ll probably end up buying the Madeleine Peyroux album sometime down the line. But Jazmine Sullivan won out today.
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