The singer and her songs
Taking a cue from Dee, I won’t disclose the full song list, except to say that the two sets featured three songs from her latest album Billie’s Bones, including “Dead Man Walking” which started the show, six songs from her Between The Lines album which was nominated for a then-unprecedented five Grammy awards, and other Janis Ian classics. Including “Society’s Child” .
She ended the show with her monumental hit, “At Seventeen” , and then came back for an encore. She asked us if there was anything we wanted to hear, to which we called out various suggestions, from which she singled out “Jesse” , saying she hadn’t sung it for quite a while, so how about she sings that. Which she did.
For her final song, she decided to get us to sing along, a “nursery rhyme” she said she’d learned in school, with a very easy chorus comprising just three single-syllable words, which she was sure we’d learn quickly. Sure enough, it was a sing-along song, but not a nursery rhyme, lah. She injected some original just-for-Singapore lyrics into the song, including the one Singlish word she said she mastered during her stay, the word LAH!
As for her singing, I can only repeat here what I wrote in an earlier post – that you couldn’t have asked for a purer performance than what she gave Singapore that evening. Just the singer and her guitar. Singing her songs. With some stories in-between.
I remember thinking she sounded exactly as she does on all her recorded materials.
I stand corrected – while she sounds like her recent recorded materials (the ones I’ve heard are Billie’s Bones and Janis Ian Live: Working Without A Net), her voice has grown richer over the years and is better than the earlier recordings (having since heard the Souvenirs: Best of Janis Ian 1972 – 1981 album which features original recordings).
What I mean when I say she sounded exactly as she does on her recorded materials is this – she needs no audio enhancements to make her voice better. Some singers need that, and so the studio recordings are lush and very good, but when these singers perform “live”, their real voices come through. Not so with Janis Ian – what you hear is what you get, whether on her recorded materials or live in person in the same room with you.
More on the stories soon.
