Oscar's Golden Girls

It was most fitting at last Sunday's Oscars that music was put front and centre in the ceremony. Film and music exist in such symbiosis that most of our iconic movie memories are tied to a particular theme or song. For diva fans, the show was an absolute dream. Jennifer Hudson showed why she won an Oscar for her role in Dreamgirls, by reprising And I Am Telling You, I'm Not Going, while Barbra Streisand gave a moving tribute to the late Marvin Hamlisch, singing his Oscar winning theme for The Way We Were. There were musical numbers from Chicago and Les Miserables. We even got a surprise rendition of Goldfinger by the ultimate Bond diva Dame Shirley Bassey, proving that at 76 she has lost none of her power. Then her heir apparent Adele delivered a perfectly tense rendition of Skyfall shortly before collecting her first Oscar for Best Original Song.

In a good year the awards for Best Original Song and Best Original Soundtrack might merit a passing reference in Oscar write-ups, but Adele currently rules music and she seemed to get more coverage than Daniel Day-Lewis and Jennifer Lawrence combined. Adele is not the first female artist to win that coveted award, although as it is given to the songwriters and not the performers, it is a select crowd. Here are my favourites of the other female artists that have a little shiny man in their lives.

Irene Cara - Flashdance... What A Feeling - 1983

Irene Cara had already been the performer of an Oscar winning song with Fame in 1980, but she got to hold the trophy when her iconic theme to the movie Flashdance conquered all three years later. Irene came to prominence with her role as Coco in the movie Fame, but she passed on continuing on the spin-off TV series, choosing instead to focus on her music career. Initially Irene was reluctant to team up with the legendary disco producer Giorgio Moroder to work on Flashdance, fearing she would be compared with Giorgio's main collaborator, Donna Summer. Luckily she took the risk and together with lyricist Keith Forsey they created one of the truly great movie theme songs. Irene's vocal on the track is fantastic, from the tentative, gentle opening, right through to the blistering dance anthem the song becomes, she shows the great range of her voice. Sadly this was to be the peak of Irene's career, as battles with her record label led to an under-promoted follow-up album and a prolonged absence from music. I have a major soft spot for Irene, so we'll leave it there for now, as I will be covering her career more fully in a future blog.

Barbra Streisand - Evergreen (Love Theme From "A Star Is Born") - 1976

Like Irene, Barbra had performed an Oscar winning song, The Way We Were, before writing one of her own. For her remake of the Judy Garland classic movie A Star Is Born, Barbra wrote the melody for a song, which lyricist Paul Williams then found just the right words to fit. Evergreen went on to become one of Barbra's biggest hit singles, as well as helping the film's soundtrack album to shift almost 15 million copies.

Carly Simon - Let The River Run - 1988

I know, I've already written about this one in my blog on Carly's many great songs for movies, Nobody Does It Better, but no rundown of my favourite Oscar winning songs would be complete without this theme from the movie Working Girl. This song is among Carly's crowning achievements, it absolutely works as a movie theme, but it also transcends that role and has, for many of her fans (myself included), become an almost spiritual piece. The lyrics pull off the difficult trick in pop of being true poetry while also accessible for the casual listener. The production is superb, the crashing drums, the soaring choir, it is a masterclass in creating an anthem. Carly revisited the song on her 2009 album of self-covers, Never Been Gone, creating a sparser, acoustic version, which is well worth a listen. That the song works both as a stripped back poem and a movie power ballad is a mark of the quality of Carly's songwriting.

Annie Lennox - Into The West - 2003

Annie has ventured into movie music a few times, probably most memorably when she and Dave produced the entire score for the movie version of George Orwell's 1984, released that very year. My personal favourite was her Love Song For A Vampire, written for Francis Ford Coppola's take on Bram Stoker's Dracula. However, it was her co-writing and performing of this achingly beautiful theme from The Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King that caught Oscar's attention. Annie gives a suitably haunting vocal on this gentle track, that builds slowly to a gorgeous, swelling chorus. It provided a fitting end note to one of cinema's most epic film series.

So as you can see, Adele has indeed joined an elite group. While they may not be the most high profile awards, the Oscars given for Best Original Song and Best Original Soundtrack are an important recognition of the role music plays in bringing movies to life. And finally a Bond song won!


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Congratulations Adele... So What's Next?

Adele is a phenomenon. There are no two ways about it, she is the music industry right now. With 2011's biggest selling album on both sides of the Atlantic, it was stunning to see the rapture with which she was received at last week's Grammy Awards. No doubt Adele will similarly clean up at tomorrow's Brit Awards, and deservedly so. She has managed to attain the holy trinity of pop success: enormous fame, gigantic record sales and universal critical acclaim. Reaching this pinnacle is far from easy; only a very few stars achieve such celestial alignment. Once you're at the top though, there are only two options: trying to stay there or going down again (gracefully or otherwise...). I'm not wishing to be a party pooper, but I'm genuinely fascinated to see what Adele does next. Before she decides, she might be well-advised to reflect on the fortunes of some fellow divas whose flames once burned as brightly. 

When she first emerged in 2008, Adele was but one of a clutch of British female singers who looked poised for world domination, and was not even "the girl most likely" to become the biggest star. I admit I'm late to the Adele bandwagon. Sure I bought 19, loved Chasing Pavements in particular and thought she was fun and refreshingly normal. Her voice had a raw soul that is extremely rare in white singers, Dusty and Amy are the only others who truly nail it. True soul music is like a whole-body vibration that starts in the toes, carries through the torso collecting emotional resonance and erupts from the throat like a primal scream. It's tough for a white girl to pull that off!

Something transformed for Adele with her second album, 21. It's well-known that it's a "break-up" album and Adele has managed to mainline the anguish of lost love, which is why it has connected on such an epic scale. Importantly, her experience gives her one of the key requirements of diva-dom: the broken heart. Adele is now a torch singer, we believe her completely when she sings "sometimes it lasts in love, but sometimes it hurts instead". If we had no knowledge of her real-life story, we would still know this girl had suffered actual loss. Most importantly Adele is a little bit rough, and I mean that as a compliment. She is not an over-polished gemstone, but a pure diamond that is only gradually revealing its potentially flawless quality.

So what happened to the other leading ladies in the Class of 2008? The three artists who appeared to be the clear frontrunners to claim the mantle of Queen of British Pop have all now fallen by the wayside. Duffy's wondrous album Rockferry sounded like a lost classic from the 60's, won her Brits and Grammys and sold over six million copies. Amy Winehouse's modern classic Back To Black was still going strong two years after its release, again garnering multi-million sales and awards. Perhaps the hottest star in music in 2008 was Leona Lewis, her album Spirit got the multi-million sales but not the major awards; no doubt in part due to snobbery about her talent show beginnings. However, four years on and Duffy is taking a self-imposed two-year break from music following the flop of her second album, Leona's second album similarly failed to impress and her third's release keeps getting delayed (it has just been pushed back to November) and, sadly, Amy is no longer with us. 

It is a big disappointment that this apparent third "British invasion" has fizzled out; we've gone from "shock and awe" to a commando mission. It can sometimes feel that all pop music careers are like all political careers; they end in failure. There are notable exceptions to this pessimistic view, but most hit artists who enjoy a prolonged career will eventually settle at a level of success far below their peak. Evidently, for Adele to sustain her success at anywhere near the levels she has enjoyed in 2011 will be a big ask. Setting fire to the rain is one thing, but how do you keep it ablaze?

It is no wonder that when asked in her recent Vogue interview what was next for her, Adele joked that she was "f**king off for four or five years" to focus on her relationship. The media storm this quote created demonstrates the pressure she will be under to produce more material. While her spokesman has reassured fans that this was an "off-the-cuff" remark, it would not be surprising if underlying it is a desire to escape this overwhelming fame and success and maintain some normalcy in her life. Whatever her true feelings, it sounds like Adele's priorities are in the right place for now.

So what can Adele learn from the experience of her diva peers? It is an age-old challenge in the music industry; balancing the artistic desire to create great music with the commercial imperative to strike while the iron is hot. Duffy and Leona are no doubt wise to take time before launching what will be "make or break" third albums; they have already paid the price for rushing out half-baked follow-ups to smash hit albums. I am sure we would rather Adele took an extended break and returned with an album of real quality than succumb to pressure to ride her fame tsunami till it inevitably crashes in disappointment. I am not saying it's impossible to maintain the level of fame, record sales and artistic credibility Adele currently enjoys, it's just that very few artists have managed to keep all three of these balls up in the air for very long.

I am, of course, assuming that Adele even wants to try and stay at the summit. There are notable examples of divas who found it all too much and opted instead to carve out their own path to happiness further down the fame mountain (hello Kate, hello Alison). I am pretty confident Adele is here to stay; her success is based on talent, pure and simple. Great songs sung by a great singer. She is clearly on an artistic roll and has a team around her she trusts and is in synch with. Surely the urge will be there to keep going and we can expect 24, or at the latest 25 to hit the shelves (how old-fashioned of me) before too long. I, for one, wish her nothing but success.


If you enjoyed reading this blog, please consider forwarding it or linking to it from your Facebook or Twitter account. Also you can hear the tracks mentioned in this week's blog on my Spotify account at the following link: Class of 2008.