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Kindle Notes & Highlights
She sings hard, man. Do you get what I’m saying? I don’t want to belabor this. She sings hard even at her softest; she sings incomprehensibly loud even at her quietest. She is everything louder than everything else. She is the too much that will never be enough. She is the Final Boss of Popular Song. I picture her towering over the 1990s like a benevolent colossus, like a Quebec-born Godzilla with a sparkly microphone, like a volcano that can serenade itself.
Recall Céline Dion onstage at the 1998 Oscars, with a two-story, vaguely boat-like structure loaded up with a full orchestra looming behind her as she sings the bejesus out of this song. Is there chest-pounding, as part of her performance? I think you know there is. Does Céline win the Oscar in question? I think you know she does.
But the new level of mastery that Céline brings to “My Heart Will Go On” is that she’s figured out how to be super loud quietly. There is nuance. There is drama. There is precisely calibrated rising action. This song is a bear attack in a library.
But her heart went on.
She outlasted all of it; she will outlast us all. When the apocalypse comes, it will come in the form of an Instagram post from God—God posts on the grid, and God’s post will appear on your feed even if you don’t follow God, if you catch my meaning—and the very last comment, on that post, will be from Courtney Love.
Erykah Badu is my vote for the best live performer of her generation. The wittiest, the wiliest, the coolest, the fieriest. I’ve seen her half a dozen times or so, and consequently I’ve spent more time waiting for her to take the stage than anyone in history, with the sole exception of Lauryn Hill. Erykah processes time differently.
The Lars Ulrich experience, particularly in the band’s early thrash years, is one giant drum fill: BRUMBUDDABRUMBUMBUMBUM. Listening to an ’80s Metallica album is like falling down the stairs for an hour.
