Jill Jackson - Lullaby - lyric

Thank you to whosoever asked about this just a few minutes ago.
 
I'm on the case already because I've been intending to post the lyrics from the rest of the songs from this album for absolutely ages. I hope to have those for 'Lullaby' by the end of tomorrow evening.

Lullaby
There was a boy and girl
Living in a shadowed world
The girl has gotten sick
Nothing they can do for it
She slowly passed away
On a cold November day

Held on to her hand
Felt like half a man
He sang her a lullaby
I'll meet you on the other side
 
This is not our last goodbye
'Cause you are my life
For him it was too much
To try pick the pieces up
Found it hard to beat
They found him down on his knees
 

His house was not a home
He could not live alone
Life was just too hard
He died of a broken heart
 
And he sang her a lullaby
When they met on the other side
Said we'll never say another goodbye
'Cause love has no time
For we are inseparable
What we have is beautiful
 
And nothing else mattered before
Just you and I - promise you
Promise me If I go before you
You would know I'd sing you a lullaby
 
I'd meet you on the other side
We'd never say another goodbye
'Cause you are my life
We are inseparable
What we have is beautiful
Nothing else matters at all.

Just you and I.


I hope that I haven't made too many mistakes. This is one album I suspect that I will never tire of. I still listen to it frequently, although I would baulk at paying the Amazon.co.uk price of £44.99 for a CD version. The d/l price is more reasonable; then again so is a CD from the lovely folks at www.cdbaby.com and if you like this then they could point you in the direction of plenty more artists that might be of interest.
 
Other Jill Jackson lyrics:
Fragile Heart
Rain On My Window
 
Now that I have done the last three of the ten album tracks, of which Lullaby has proven the most taxing, I'm inspired to do the other seven. When I have I shall perhaps reward myself by buying the 2010 Painted Faces EP.  She is on tour in the UK in the next few weeks but many of the gigs in Scotland are already sold out...

Jill Jackson live in 2010.

 A new album in 2011 too; that deserves a blog-post all of its own as soon as I know more.  On the Painted Faces EP (CD only) she swaps her acoustic guitar (above) for ukelele. Three are new tracks while the other two are stripped back versions of older ones and I'm not going to tell you which. Painted Faces is available from CDbaby for $10 plus the shipping charges for the appropriate location.

A Curious Thing - New Music 2010, part 5

I've been quiet for a while, that is true, but I've still been listening and reading. With three new albums by artists I've already mentioned in this respect released tomorrow it is time to move on.

Here are another few that are well and truly on my wants list and they are all by returning artists...

Few might actually recall her 2007 début, This Is the Life, because it was a slow burner but it finally reached #1 in the UK album charts a year after release, while then selling over 3 million copies worldwide (to date). I've heard a couple of the new tracks and 'A Curious Thing' would seem to be well worth the wait. Is it slightly 'rockier' than the first album? Yes, well maybe, but not in a radical way. I can't currently find the album artwork so this will have to do for now.

The same, given what I have heard and including the first single, can be said of the fifth album from Goldfrapp. In this case it would seem to be rather more electro-influenced than 'Seventh Tree' and none the worst for that. Alison's vocals are as good as ever they were but perhaps Will Gregory has twiddled a few more buttons than on their last recording. If summer 2010 sounds like these albums it will be one to remember. I should know the title of this album, due to be released in late Spring 2010, is but it has slipped my mind for the moment.

Jill Jackson is another artist who has promised a second album soon...

This image is from her myspace but what it relates to is only my guess.

Can I think of more? Well yes I can.

Rain On My Window - Jill Jackson - lyrics

Thank-you to whoever just asked for this lyric: I've been meaning to do more lyrics for ages and you finally put me up to it and it is, as it happens, raining on my skylight window as I write.

This is what I think the lyric is but it comes with the usual proviso:

Rain On My Window

How do I begin?
How do I begin?
Now, to fly away...
When I can't feel the wind on my face.

I've been running out
I've been running out
Of these things to say...
There's another girl in my place.

And here comes the rain on my window.
It seems like an old friend to me
Who is crying down on my shadow
And knows how lost I can be
Without you, without me.

There's nothing like the sun
There's nothing like the sun
That I see in your smile
And now the day is gone it leaves me cold.

And here comes the rain on my window.
It seems like an old friend to me
Who is crying down on my shadow
And knows how lost I can be
Without you, without me.

Tears are in my hands
Tears are in my hands
And they cut like ice
How am I gonna live without my soul?

And here comes the rain on my window.
It seems like an old friend to me
Who is crying down on my shadow
And knows how lost I can be
Without you, without me.

And there we will meet
Somewhere between
A prayer and dream
God only knows how my heart goes on!

Without you, without me
Without you, without me

I could walk the world
I could walk the world
A thousand times
But I could never find a love like this.

And here comes the rain on my window.
It seems like an old friend to me
Who is crying down on my shadow
And knows how lost I can be
Without you, without me.

Without you, without me.
Without you, without me.

It is a brilliant album from start to finish and one that should be far better known. If I were sent to a desert island with just one album from 2008 then this would likely be the one.

Richard

2008 matters because... Part 1

I've not posted much recently but that is not because music has been far from my mind. Rather the opposite in fact; it is just that I have been listening to it and thinking about it rather than writing about it. Several people have asked about lyrics to some albums I have mentioned recently, particularly 'Jill Jackson' - Jill Jackson and 'Love Tattoo' - Imelda May and I hope to have these on-line this coming weekend at the latest.

Some say, and it has been the case for decades, that the latest year is just more proof of the end of the world as we know it. I am quite willing to believe that the global economy in 2008 has suffered vicissitudes unknown in the lifetimes of most of us but does that therefore mean the end of music as we know it? I'd wager that the answer is no for that never really happens, new layers are simply added and, while some genres fade in popularity and prominence (not always the same thing) they rarely disappear completely and have a tendency to return, revisited and reinvented, when least suspected. I have only one reservation and that is: Do you get the feeling that things are undergoing a subtle, but perhaps profound, change?

Think back over the last year and there are some surprises, the most surprising often not being the most immediately obvious. A good and fairly easy place to start is the continuing ascent of apparently unlikely, but often very successful, cover versions.

Who, say three years ago, would have predicted the likes of Adele covering Bob Dylan's Make You Feel My Love?
It's the only cover on her 2008 début album '19' but what a dangerous choice - he has rarely played it live, hinting that it it is too difficult to perform under pressure - but when she performed it live on 'Later... with Jules Holland' as a piano ballad it went stellar and is now to be a single.
Leona Lewis has just released an updated version of her #1 2007 album 'Spirit', which went straight to the top spot again this week; of the two new tracks on it one is actually a cover version of Run from the 2003 Snow Patrol album 'Final Straw' which she first revealed, by performing it live, on BBC Radio 1's 'Live Lounge' in 2007 and again on X-Factor a couple of weeks ago.

I've heard this cover of Willie Nelson's Angel Too Close To The Ground (from the soundtrack to the 1980 drama Honeysuckle Rose), performed live by Beth Rowley twice now and it is amazing:

If you had not have fallen then I would not have found you
Angel flying too close to the ground.

I patched up your broken wings and hung around a while
Kept your spirits up and your fever down.
I knew some day that you would fly away
For love's the greatest healer to be found

So leave me, if you need to, but I will still remember
Angel flying too close to the ground.

It is included, as a duet, on her 2008 début album 'Little Dreamer', which also includes a fine cover of Bob Dylan's I Shall Be Released and also some very good new songs. In my opinion So Sublime is the best of them, and amongst the best on the album, but it is all a close call.

I'll expand on what I mean by this generalisation in the coming weeks, but this is my premise:
Could the diversity that we have seen this year be the start of a new era of popular music we can hardly yet even imagine?

Fragile Heart - Jill Jackson lyric

I said earlier in the week that I was going to try and work out the lyrics for this album, even though it is probably one with which few are yet acquainted.

Jill Jackson live in Edinburgh in 2008.

I started with Track 8 simply because, on what is a remarkable album, it caught my attention first:

FRAGILE HEART

Here comes the sunshine
To brighten my day.
There go my worries
I've washed them away.
Now I have blue skies
They're no longer grey.

Out of the darkness, into the light
Everything's madness, but hey that's just life
I just need someone to kiss me goodnight.

Ooh, ooh, ooh - Right from the start
Ooh, ooh, ooh - my fragile heart
Ooh, ooh, ooh - tears me apart
Ooh, ooh, ooh - my fragile heart.
So long ago
When love was young
So much to give
And no one to blame
And I just need shelter

Every day I'll fight but I'm hidin' away
Most times I can't find what to say.
I just need someone to take it away.

Ooh, ooh ooh, - Right from the start
Ooh, ooh, ooh - my fragile heart
Ooh, ooh, ooh - tears me apart
Ooh, ooh, ooh - my fragile heart.

Here comes the sunshine
To brighten my day.

For the lyric of 'Rain On My Window' see here.

Hard to find, easy to like and still largely unknown.

It's rare these days that I can spend a whole evening listening, over and over again, to an album that I've just acquired. It has happened before and this evening, for the second time in a month, it just happened again.

While the album cover is hard to reproduce to any exciting degree I have tried my best. The same cannot be said of the album and, yes, I have already started on the lyrics! The ten tracks on it are these:

• All Of The Colours
• Last To Know
• What If I Stay
• Inside Out
• Mind In Bloom
• Stumble
• Don't Let Me Go
• Fragile Heart
• Rain On My Window
• Lullaby
  

It is unusual in many ways. It had to come to me from the US, yet this is an album by an artist from Scotland. It is certainly influenced by Nashville, country and Americana both, but is not remotely derivative and on several songs her native accent shines through. It is more Americana-influenced and less rock-acoustic, particularly in the choice of backing instruments I think, than Amy Macdonald's This Is The Life but also not really oceans apart, at least in music territory.

She is a talented songwriter and guitarist - entirely acoustic on this album.

For those lucky enough to be at 'The Green Martini', in Concorde NH, this evening then you are soon to hear her perform live and, to tell the truth, I envy you. Just enjoy it and if you were there - or at any other gig on her tours - please feel free to really wind me up by telling me about it!

The rumour machine whispers that the Grasshopper EP is due soon and I await that with great interest. Acoustic or not? I don't know!

Genio atrapado y las consecuencias.

As a single 'Genie in a Bottle' was pretty remarkable and, perhaps more surprising still, although it was released almost nine years ago it has proved a blueprint for many very successful pop songs since.
Be that as it may, and the above is true, I think that the version released on the 2001 album Mi Reflejo, sung in Spanish, is actually far better than her original version sung in English!

Then, somewhat later, there was a cover version of note, released as a single by short-lived Scottish band Speedway, and also included on the album 'Save Yourself' (2004).

The English language version soon got a second chance but with a very different artist in charge... Jill Jackson 'punked' it and it has never sounded better. While Speedway soon split this might, in retrospect, be regarded as a statement of intent.
Christina Aguilera's career has gone from strength to strength since then, albeit with a time-out for her first child, a 'greatest hits' collection out imminently and a new studio album due in summer 2009. You might be forgiven for thinking that Jill Jackson has quit the music game altogether.
That is, however, far from the truth...

In the meantime here are the lyrics to Genio Atrapado, as found on Mi Reflejo.

Genio Atrapado

Vamos, vamos... uh, oh, uh, oh, uh, oh
Vamos, vamos, ah

Un siglo llevo en soledad,
atrapada queriendo escapar.

Soñando que alguien... me libere
Me lanzas un beso y yo te quiero amar
Pero hay un precio que tendrás que pagar
Para que me entregue, para me entregue

Oh oh oh oh oh (mi cuerpo dice quiero)
Oh oh oh oh oh (Pero mi alma tiene miedo)

Si me quieres junto a tí, frota bien y ya verás
Como un genio liberado haré tus sueños realidad
Si me quieres junto a tí, gánate mi corazon
Tres deseos te concedo, si me juras tu amor.

Como um genio atrapado espero
Liberarme con tu amor sincero
Como un genio atrapado espero
ven, ven, sacarme de aqui

Bailando nos domina la pasión
nuestros impulsos fuera de control
Es tan dificil... contenerse
Piensas que hoy tal vez sucederá, pero yo sé que nada pasará
Tienes que quererme, tienes que quererme...

Oh oh oh oh oh (mi cuerpo dice quiero)
Oh oh oh oh oh (Pero mi alma tiene miedo)

Si me quieres junto a tí, frota bien y ya verás
Como un genio liberado haré tus sueños realidad
Si me quieres junto a tí, gánate mi corazon
Tres deseos te concedo, si me juras tu amor.

Como um genio atrapado espero
Liberarme con tu amor sincero
Como un genio atrapado espero
ven, ven, sacarme de aqui
Oh oh oh oh oh (mi cuerpo dice quiero)
Oh oh oh oh oh (Pero mi alma tiene miedo)

Si me quieres junto a tí, frota bien y ya verás
Como un genio liberado haré tus sueños realidad
Si me quieres junto a tí, gánate mi corazon
Tres deseos te concedo, si me juras tu amor.

Como un genio atrapado espero
ven, ven, sacarme de aqui

[No importa que es música pop!]