Saturday, September 7, 2013

Women's voices: Never lose affection

I wasn’t going to get through the month of Voices without The Divine Miss M. I’ve been a Bette Midler fan for decades. Even though a lot of her material verges on the sappy, she makes it work. She’s like an earth mother—she survives everything. And she laughs at it all.

I’m not saying I don’t have “The Rose” or “From a Distance” on some of my playlists (and “Friends” has a great beat for the gym). But probably my favorite Midler song is “In My Life”. I think it’s my favorite cover of that song, as well.

When I went hunting for a video of it to share with you, I came across this unusual performance—just Midler and a ukulele player. Now there’s a command performance.


For a change of pace, I’m also giving you Mary Black’s version of “Mo Ghile Mear”. This is an example of art transcending the message, since the song is one of about 5,000 about Bonnie Prince Charlie, one of the most useless objects of misplaced idolatrous devotion in all of history, and a prime example of the idiocy of hereditary monarchies.

To my mind, it’s bad enough that the Scots spent all that time in whiney-ass hand-wringing over the “king over the water”—always conveniently forgetting what a plonker he was at both field command and running a government in exile. As far as I’m concerned, they can lament him to their little hearts’ content, and keep on writing those soppy songs about him, since it seems to help with their innate inferiority complexes. But this one has the goddess representing Ireland moaning about him, too; and I think that’s just a tad beyond the beyond.

However, frankly, the sound of the song is lovely, and I can listen to Black sing practically anything and feel better for it. So I’ve included it for today.


(I apologize for this particular video, which features heavy-handedly Scottish-type paintings of a particularly cringeworthy 19th Century fashion; but it’s the only one I could find that has the best version of Black singing it. So close your eyes and listen. Don’t think of England.)




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