I have again been listen­ing to all female sing­ers today: Christina , P!nk, Joan, Tracy, Melanie, Avril, Norah, and Alanis Moris­sette.

Hav­ing listened to Stripped by Christina Aguilera, for the last few days, I’ve also been listen­ing to some of the other female sing­ers I have in my col­lec­tion. First was P!nk — M!ssundaztood. As soon as I had refreshed my ears to that album, I needed to invest­ig­ate just why Christine Aguilera sounds so much like Pink on half the album. Easy! Linda Perry wrote or co-wrote and pro­duced four of the tracks on Christina’s album (includ­ing Beau­ti­ful) and six or seven of the tracks on Pink’s! Linda Perry was the huge voiced lead singer from 4 non blondes. More on Linda here, here, and here.
I’ve also listened to Joan Armat­rad­ing, Tracy Chap­man, Melanie C., Avril Lav­igne, Norah Jones, and Mari­anne Faith­full today. Of course I’ve got lots more ladies to listen to tomorrow.

I finally got around to buy­ing Stripped by Christina Aguilera after sev­eral recom­mend­a­tions. I really didn’t want to like this but after three singles which I did like I finally suc­cumbed. There are some really good tracks on this album, the pro­duc­tion is nice and crisp if unad­ven­tur­ous, and Christina’s voice is great!
Recommended!

I ‘re-discovered’ Rean­im­a­tion by Linkin Park this morn­ing. That is, I put it in my CD drive at work for the first time in a few weeks and found myself unable to remove it A truly clas­sic album.
But then I for­got to bring it home tonight, so I’m cur­rently listen­ing to Met­eora

Sad to see that Barry White has died today after being ill for some time. The BBC has an obit­u­ary. I like his music and Jan is a big fan.

“Chester Ben­ning­ton, vocal­ist for Linkin Park was admit­ted to a Los Angeles
area hos­pital last Fri­day after­noon after an attack of severe back and
abdom­inal pains. Ben­ning­ton remains hos­pit­al­ized as doc­tors are still
try­ing to determ­ine the cause of these ail­ments.
“All tour­ing and video shoot plans in Europe have been put on hold this
month as we make sure Chester fully recov­ers,” states a spokes­per­son for
the band “we wish him the best, and will keep every­one pos­ted as to his
condition.”

My best wishes are with him and his fam­ily.
Update 11/06/2003:

Linkin Park’s Chester Ben­ning­ton is out of hos­pital but details of his ill­ness are still a mys­tery. Chester him­self thinks it was simply a virus.

Like, “Duh!” Record industry cut­ting off nose to spite face.

“New research has con­firmed what many already sus­pec­ted — music down­load ser­vices such as Nap­ster and KaZaA are a major factor in driv­ing CD sales.
Many music fans use ser­vices such as KaZaA, and pre­vi­ously the now defunct Nap­ster, in a ‘try before you buy’ capa­city — find­ing out what new music they like before going out and buy­ing a CD.”

“Per­haps the real truth is some­thing the RIAA is unpre­pared to face up to. Many crit­ics have sug­ges­ted the homo­gen­ising of the music industry is the real reason for the CD slump of recent years.
End­less streams of indis­tin­guish­able boy bands, churn­ing out cover ver­sions, and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of the Pop Idol format, has seen the music industry stag­nate in recent years.”

I’ve also read some­where (I will try to find the source), that the music industry released 12,000 fewer CD titles last year than the pre­vi­ous year. If you don’t pro­duce the goods, your sales are going to go down!

Yes­ter­day, whilst sat hav­ing a cof­fee in my local (to the office) Java Cafe Bar, they were play­ing Desire by Bob Dylan. Wow! It must be more than 20 years since I’d heard that album. I real­ised I still knew all the lyr­ics too (I used to listen to it a lot). Or at least the lyr­ics to the three or four tracks I heard whilst drink­ing my cof­fee. I also remembered, even­tu­ally, that the haunt­ing violin work was by Scar­let Rivi­era, and back­ing vocals by Emmylou Har­ris!
After I found myself still singing snatches of the songs today, I real­ised two things: One, I rarely hear songs which tell a story these days, and pretty much every song on that album tells a story; and two, I really need to go buy a copy!
Desire was the first con­tem­por­ary album I listened too. Back in 1975 (I think) when it was a new release, my sis­ter Carole’s boy­friend, Mike, left a copy at our house. I listened to it over and over again. Prior to that the only LPs (12 inch vinyl records to you young­sters) I had access to were Carole’s Elvis albums, my Mum’s Perry Como, Andy Wil­li­ams, and Frank Sinatra albums, and my Dad’s John Den­ver col­lec­tion. All good ground­ing for appre­ci­at­ing tal­en­ted sing­ers, but Desire was some­thing else entirely. Later Mike also left a copy of Cat Stevens’ Tea for the Tiller­man, another great album I no longer own.