Sweet Success! Adele's New Album

In 2008, I became a big fan of the British singer Adele when I saw her give a powerful performance of her song "Chasing Pavements" on Saturday Night Live. Sister sang like she meant it, and I was hooked. With all the soul-sucking awful kill-me-now music out there right now, I love to hear a great female singer with a lot of talent and soul, and Adele has more than enough of both. Her voice reminds me of a combination of Amy Winehouse (without the drug problems) and Duffy, who I also love, with a bit of an old-school vibe mixed in as well. Her debut album, entitled "19," reached the number 1 spot on the charts in the UK, and won her the prize for Best New Artist at the Grammy's. Dave FM, my favorite radio station in Atlanta, also caught on and started playing her stuff, but she somehow didn't seem to find the same widespread success here as she did in the UK. Her songs "Chasing Pavements," "Hometown Glory," and a beautiful rendition of Bob Dylan's "Make You Feel My Love" all reached acclaim with the Brits and her fans in the states. Here is a link for "Chasing Pavements:"
http://www.youtube.com
Try to ignore the video and just listen...

Adele's new album, "21," was just released yesterday, and I am already a big fan. Her song "Rolling in the Deep" has been released for several months now, and I've been listening to it on repeat, so I can't wait to see what else is in store on the rest of her album. I can tell it is about to be a big hit, and in honor of Adele's album release, Dave FM's lunch hour theme yesterday was "Best Female Voices," a category in which Adele most definitely belongs. Dave FM's website says "Adele is everywhere now- we knew how fabulous she was a long time ago" and so did I, but that's alright, I'm willing to spread the love!
Check out the whole new album, "21," here:
http://www.npr.org

Happy Listening!

Back to the Start

It seemed fitting for me to write my first post as an explanation of where I got the idea for the title of this blog. The line "Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!" is from the poem “Today,” by one of my favorite poets, Frank O’Hara. Part of the New York School of poetry in the 1950s and 60s, O'Hara is known for his warm, lively personality and his eccentric habit of writing poems as they struck him, even if he was on a noisy street corner or in a room full of people. Many of O’Hara’s poems take place in Manhattan, where exist the “hum-colored/ cabs,” and he often wrote while on his lunch break as he wandered the streets of the city. His New York is a surreal one, a swirling scene of everyday objects like cans of Coca-Cola and Times Square chorus girls. Don’t mistake his casual tone for emptiness, however, because his dream-like state of being, “stuck in traffic in a taxi cab,” is the stuff of real life, and he shows us how to appreciate it. Because after all, “cheeseburgers,” “yellow helmets,” and “cats playing in sawdust” are not only a part of O’Hara’s surreal world, but ours as well, and they “do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks.”


Here's a link where you can find "Today," "A Step Away From Them," and more of O'Hara's lunch-time poetry: frankohara.org

Happy poetry reading!