In a Word...SOUL

Newest discovery- James Morrison. I heard of him in a round about way. I found myself downloading as much of his music as I could find. And I listened to it. And loved it. He's from the UK, which doesn't really matter to me. What matters is how his music makes me feel. I have this filing system with music. If it doesn't make me feel anything, if it's just some low-rate singer with a computer generated backup, that get's the click-and-drag to the recycle bin. If it makes me happy, that goes on the feel good playlist in my head (which I often find myself singing to myself. At work. A few songs in.) Then there's the file that holds all else. The music that makes me really feeeeeeel it in my bones. There are musicians out there that do more than sing a song. They feel it and in turn, the listener feels it. Music that moves the soul. Musicians that do that should be brought to an island somewhere so they can write the soundtrack to our world.

Morrison is one of those musicans. He has this roughness to his voice, like he just got out of bed in the morning-every time he sings. It's this roughness, and the way he feels his way through his music, that brings out his soul. After I listened to his music for a while and just fell in love with him as an artist, I went to his myspace page and found this quote, which I found absolutely fitting for what I felt about his music.

"I grew up on artists like Otis Redding, Al Green, Cat Stevens, The Kinks and Van Morrison. I always loved songs where the singer would sing with real soul, like they really believed in what they were singing about. Those are the kinds of songs that really stayed with me. I can't sing a song about something I don't believe in."

For me, that quote encapsulates exactly how I feel listening to his music. His current album is called Undiscovered. I can't imagine him being undiscovered by the main stream music scene much longer. Sometimes, I'd like to keep secret my favorite musicians so that I could still go see them in dingy, smoky bars in some out of the way town in middle America but that's not fair to them. If I have to, I'll go to the stadiums if it means success for them as they have earned it. I'll deal with Singing (off-key) Sally, Drunk Dan and Talking Tammy if it means hearing music that makes me feel good. Thankfully (for me), Morrison is still under the big-time radar so I have a bit more time to enjoy him as I like to.