Day By Day

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Summary Judgment

"She Who Must Not Be Named" has issued her judgment on a YouTube song I posted a few days ago -- the one with Jane Monheit and Michael Buble doing "I Won't Dance". She checked a few other songs by Monheit and proclaimed her "too draggy". No, she wasn't saying that Jane looked like a drag queen or anything like that, just that her songs were too down tempo. But Michael Buble is another story. "She" really likes his work, particularly this piece:



Well, it's more up tempo and the song is nice as a novelty and the guy has great phrasing and a pleasing stage presence, but Monheit has that wonderful voice and can do amazing, sophisticated, subtle things with it that are far beyond Buble's ken. Sure, she's over the top visually -- works her eyes and body too much -- and she likes to show off her technical virtuosity a bit too much. At times you just want her to sing the melody plain and simple. But she's still young and learning her stagecraft. Buble right now is as good as he ever will get [and that's pretty damn good] but Jane is still developing and it will be exciting to see what she eventually does with all that talent.