So. First things first. I tried to make “Song of the Day” happen, and it was an abject failure. Turns out I’m incapable of quelling my executive dysfunction for long enough to make the “one blog post every day” thing happen, even if it’s something as simple as a song review. So I’m turning this into a weekly thing – one song every Monday, and no pressure on me to post anything else on a daily basis. If I somehow find it in me to post more than one song in a week, that’ll be a bonus, but more than likely what I’ll do is schedule posts of that sort to go up on Mondays.
EDIT, JUNE 7th 2022: Never mind. I’m going back to calling the feature “Song of the Day”, and there just… won’t be one every day. There’ll be one whenever I can manage it, whether that’s every day for a month straight followed by three months of silence, or whatever else. I know that those of you who care about my work don’t particularly mind the formalities of what it’s called or how often I manage to publish it and make it available. I’ve got a fuckload of executive functioning problems that I can’t do much to fix, so it’ll have to just be what it is. Here ends the June edit – back to the main body of the piece.
I have quite a number of essays on various other topics gestating, especially in global affairs – Israel-Palestine, Ukraine, Taiwan, Armenia, and much else. But I can’t promise when they’ll appear, because I haven’t been able to maintain anything resembling consistency where my writing is concerned, and also because depression has been eating me alive lately, despite the fact that the weather here in Toronto is lovely and keeps getting better and better all the time. I had a much higher hopes for this blog than my output would suggest could ever have been possible. But I have to take things as they are, and not as I’d like them to be. Which means I’m required to disappoint you, my readers, at least in part, as a result of the fact that I haven’t been able to deliver the thoughtful and insightful material that I happen to have it on good authority that at least a few of you believe me to be capable of. To those of you who still have faith in me, I wish to make known to you my abiding gratitude.
Now! As for the song I’ve chosen to highlight. There ain’t much to it, really – I just love hearing a singer put their fuckin’ ankles in a vocal performance, and this is one of the most invigorating and galvanizing vocal performances of the past several years. The word that comes to mind is “gutbucket”, which is one of my favourites – it’s suggestive of the Louisiana swamps, and the energy Brandy is channelling here is very Ma Rainey and very Lucille Bogan and very Sister Rosetta Tharpe, which is exactly as it should be. I would also venture to say that there’s more than a little bit of Yvonne Fair and Millie Jackson and (the recently departed!) Betty Davis in this performance, and speaking for myself, I find it electrifying. There are at least three other songs Brandy has released over the years that mean a lot to me, but this one is a different order of thing entirely – she really fuckin’ nails it to the wall, and it demands to be heard. The Spotify link is here, and the YouTube link is here. One of the YouTube commenters says, “She sang this like the rent and the car note were due”, which is chef’s-kiss one-single-tear perfect.