#413: Joan Armatrading, "Tell Me" (2013)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m33icE2L0tQ


Joan Armatrading, like Joni Mitchell, began her recording career before my birth as a folk and folk-pop artist -- distinguished at first in Armatrading's case by her soulful contralto voice -- and then stretched out. Joan's career progression was an unpredictable one, experimenting on different albums with Elton John-style rockers, disco, reggae, collaborations with Springsteen’s E Street Band, perky New Wave synth-pop, and — as her voice got deeper and richer — roots-rock and blues, although those rootsy explorations were made unconventional by her increasingly novel chord sequences.


The style-hopping meant that it was easy to enjoy one of her albums and be put off by the next,
but also that there was never a reason to give up on her. For 2013's album Starlight -- my favorite of her records, 41 years after her debut -- she settled into jazz-pop that sounds like the work of an extremely impressive late night combo … except that apparently she played every instrument herself. (Presumably using lots of overdubs, although it’s an even better story if she played the whole thing live using six extra robot arms. In which case I'm ranking this song waaaaay too low.)


"Tell Me", buoyed by limber one-string-at-a-time bass and eccentric clusters of chromatic piano chords, has a gentle late-night feel that reminds me a little of Rowlf the Dog sitting in with the Electric Mayhem at their moodiest, but only if they decided to show up the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Parts of the song are in 5/8; parts of the song don't seem to me to have a meaningful time signature at all; and even the "Love is the answer/ love is what heals/ Let's stay forever/ friends" section, with '80s synthesizer, achieves 4/4 time while making it feel novel and experimental. It all moves along nicely, and I see no reason not to dance to it; the rhythm is simply subservient to the flow her thoughts, as are the swoops of her vocal melody.


As for those thoughts, they're a platonic love song to a lifelong best friend. The thoughts are not complicated -- "You rely on me, I rely on you/ I can dare you on, you double-dare me too/ We can dare to be different, but at the same time we should be different together/ And when we were younger, we would always compete/ and the winner would taunt: na na na na na" -- but they're well-expressed and thorough.


I've noticed that my countdown has been, and will be, surprisingly short on romantic love songs. I have nothing against romantic love, and it's a random coincidence that my favorite love-song writer (Robyn Hitchcock) will be represented by something else, but I probably do kind of automatically discount any given romantic love song just because the world has *so very many* of them.

Armatrading's written a bunch of those herself, some of them excellent.

The world does not have so very many songs about other kinds of love, however; indeed, I suspect it has too few. "Tell Me" does its part to narrow that gap.