Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Musical Transformation

Admittedly, I haven't felt much like blogging for a while -- plus, I wanted my last post (about my mom's passing) to stand on its own. I really haven't had many ideas, recently; so I figured I'd take a cue from one of my friends' blogs, and just mail this one in....

I wrote about Charity Vance last year -- she was one of the contestants on American Idol the year I watched the show. Interestingly, my son *adores* her (even at 10 months old) -- her song "Run Away With Me" (which is the video embedded into the post I made) enthralls him every time he hears the opening piano notes.

I began searching for other blonde singers that had melodic tunes, and came across Nina Gordon ... who? you may ask... Well, as a solo artist, she released a song in 2000, called "Tonight and the Rest of My Life" -- a perfect sound for my son:



A really nice song, with slow, melodic sounds. He definitely likes it (not as much as he likes Charity, though). But, her name (and her look) sounded really familiar to me. Did a little more digging in my mind's memories, and realized -- hmmm .... only two years before THIS song, she was putting out stuff like this:



Wow - that's some transformation; in just two years. I mean, Phil Collins (and Peter Gabriel) left Genesis; but the music they put out wasn't *that* dramatically different.

Fortunately (I guess) for her die-hard fans, she released what I call "middle-ground" music just a few years later ... a cover of N.W.A.'s "Straight Outta Compton" - but with the same type of music as "Tonight and the Rest of My Life":



So, what musical artists do YOU think have gone through an equally dramatic metamorphosis? Anyone? Anyone even come close to comparing to the radical changes made by Ms. Gordon?