Guilty Pleasures -or- How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Norah Jones

I have written before about my personal battles with music snobbery (well, loosely, here and here), and I fully admit to many failings in this area. However, even the most pretentious music fan has a few selections in their music collection that they love, in spite of their misgivings about the lack of inherent quality or hipness of those albums. For example, a good friend of mine says he can't stand the Doors--they're derivative, bloated, and grotesque (ironically, much like Jim Morrison near the end). And yet, while perusing his CDs the other day, I noticed he had the Doors first album.

me: I thought you hated the Doors.
him: I do.
me: Then why do you have a Doors CD?
him: that must be somebody else's.

I didn't press the issue. Suffice to say, we all have our guilty pleasures that run countercurrent to our usual attitudes.

When Norah Jones' first album came out I had initially thought, hey, nice voice--sultry, with a touch of relaxed soul. But after hearing "Don't Know Why" the seven millionth time in the bookstore/coffeeshop/department store [enter the music snob] I wrote her off as neo-adult-contemp-jazz-lite. Cut me some slack, though, that song was so everywhere I think if you stood in the middle of a corn field in Kansas you could have heard faint strains of it on the wind.

Then, when visiting New York last summer, a friend was playing her new album, Feels Like Home. After a few tracks, I thought it sounded, um, pretty okay [music snob begins to blush]. She made me a copy, I proceeded to listen to it quite a bit. Then I realized it: this album is damn good. And I realized another thing: as a jazz record it's completely forgettable, but as a *country* record it kicks ass. That was the key. Norah Jones is a great country singer shrouded in the guise of a mediocre jazz stylist. It's all there--songs about heartbreak and relationships gone bad, great harmonies, her laid-back voice has a bit of southern drawl, there's even some slide guitar. Okay, this isn't such a musical epiphany--after all, she does do a duet with Dolly Parton on one of the songs (it's a kickin' song, too). But the country side is where she really shines; it's only the drums and piano that give her a "jazz" feel.

so there it is. I'm out of the closet. it's a great album and I like listening to it. Now, if you'll excuse me I'm going to go back to disparaging the over-produced, ultra-simplistic drivel on Top 40 radio.