A-hoooooooo!

The New York Times just had an article a few days ago about Colombian pop star Shakira's new album and her increasing visibility in international charity and political circles. Indeed, in some ways, she seems to be pulling a Bono, whose moments of greatest political influence also seem to come at times when his band is at its most relevant musically (the late 80s/early 90s and the first few years of this century, lining up with Joshua Tree/Rattle and Hum/Achtung Baby and All That You Can't Leave Behind--at least according to this observer). I wish Shakira nothing but the best in her charitable work, and I think she's kind of cool musically. "Hips Don't Lie" is undoubtedly a smash, a song we'll be dancing to at parties for the next twenty years. I'm also actually a huge fan of "She-Wolf," ("Loba," in Spanish). I think it's a great song, and I love the completely-out-of-left-field howls that she does. Great stuff. And everyone has had good things to say about her most recent tour.

It has to be said, though, that Shakira is just not a great singer. This becomes painfully clear on her ballads. All those little warbles and yodels she does can't quite make up for the fact that her voice isn't strong enough to sustain notes and have them sound decent. Which is too bad, because she's obviously an incredibly compelling performer and provides a much-needed Latin American presence in the mainstream pop world. But I can't help but thinking that it's not quite deserved.

You want proof? Listen to her version of The Pretenders' "I'll Stand By You" from the Hope for Haiti telethon last year.



Yikes! Her lack of vocal chops was made all the more glaring by the fact that she was preceded by my man, Stevie Wonder. Stevie does about a minute of his tune, "A Time to Love," which isn't a great song. But then he goes into "Bridge Over Troubled Water," and, frankly, just blows that song out of the water. Honestly, I brought this clip up on youtube, listened to it for about two minutes, then I was looking at something in another browser tab while the song kept playing. After another minute, I realized I was crying. It's really that good.




So I haven't had a chance to listen to Shakira's new album, Sale el Sol, yet. So we'll see. But as for now, if I'm looking for pop divas, I'll stick with Beyonce and Xtina--though she hasn't done anything very good recently, my friend Ave was right to point out that "Beautiful" is just a really stellar tune. But for everything else, Stevie.

Busy Being Born

I'm not going to write one of those lame posts in which I apologize for my lack of posts and promise to do better next time. No. What I will say is that the lack of posts is due to the fact that I have been incredibly busy over the last few months. "Busy?" you ask. Yes, indeed.

In early August, Catharine and I packed up the car, wished our subletters a farewell, and headed off to Boston (first stopping at the wedding of some grad school friends in New Jersey). We spent the next few weeks planning, ahem, our wedding, which was absolutely lovely--we got married on August 29 in Catharine's old childhood home in Belmont, MA. My grandparents performed the ceremony. Our friends Mike and Ellie played jazz standards and bossa nova beforehand. Our friend Susan played Brahms during the ceremony. My sister decorated the wedding cake. Catharine's family friend Izzie did all of the cooking. And the evening ended with an absolute throw-down dance party, with jams curated by myself, my lovely wife, and my best man Matt. You really should have been there.

Since then, though, I would say that I've been running around like a chicken with its head cut off, but that would be disrespectful to chickens everywhere, who, generally speaking, are far less frantic than I have been. I'm teaching a writing course at Penn on Mondays and Wednesdays, I'm commuting back and forth between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh every week, I'm trying to keep working on my dissertation, and I'm applying for tenure-track jobs, post-docs, and evening and weekend shifts at Famous Footwear.

And I'm saving all of my best writing for my dissertation. I can't waste any of my bons mots on a non-paying audience these days, I just don't have enough to go around. So you may be stuck, for a while, with quotes from articles that I read and find interesting, along with the occasional dispatch from Dissertation Land. Oh, and when my Wynton article finally gets published (it's at the publisher now, I've even got the online tracking information and everything), there will probably be a link to that, too. That's all I can handle for the time being. Content yourselves with knowing that I'm working hard behind the scenes, trying to figure out tribute bands and explain them to everyone else. It will be worth it, I promise.

Talking 'Bout My Generation

"A young person in 2002 did not, I suspect, have to attend a fancy East Coast college to come of age with a looming terror that the rites of high achievement were becoming far more sacramental than significant. Attending a school like [ ] did, however, make certain things stand in relief. One thing that stood out for me, that first fall of 2002, was that the song most often playing at the parties, the apparent soundtrack of our generation's independence, was a hit released 13 and a half years earlier, as a 7-inch single, by Madonna."

-Nathan Heller, Slate.com, "You Can't Handle the Veritas"