Swing Time

by Zadie Smith

I don’t remember the song she sang – I never really liked her songs – but standing in that empty concert hall, listening to her sing without backing music, with no support of any kind, I found that the sheer beauty of the voice, its monumental dose of soul, the pain implicit within it, bypassed all my conscious opinions, my critical intelligence or sense of the sentimental, or whatever it is that people are referring to when they talk about their own ‘good taste’, going instead straight into my spine, where it convulsed a muscle and undid me.