Popular Music - October 2017

Tori Amos

• The Beekeeper
• American Doll Posse
• Abnormally Attracted to Sin
• Midwinter Graces
• Native Invader

Fiona Apple - When the Pawn...
Christine and the Queens - Christine and the Queens
Missy Higgins - The Ol' Razzle Dazzle
Level 42 - Running in the Family
John Mayer - Battle Studies
Mike and the Mechanics - Mike and the Mechanics
Joni Mitchell

• Don Juan's Reckless Daughter
• Mingus
• Wild Things Run Fast
• Dog Eat Dog

Roisin Murphy - Overpowered
Megan Washington - There There
Megan Washington - Saint Lo (single)

The Tori Amos/Joni Mitchell face-off continued in October, though at a slower pace with only 4 pairings of albums. Both artists were, at this point in their careers, changing styles and becoming less popular than before.

While most Tori Amos albums get a hearing pretty frequently, it sometimes surprises me how long I haven't listened to something. Which I guess is one reason I keep proper records in the first place, but it was startling to discover that these particular Missy Higgins, John Mayer and Roisin Murphy albums were all last listened to in 2014. All of those albums seem familiar, as if I've heard them pretty recently. And apparently, this was the first time I'd listened to Mike and the Mechanics since I began keeping pop music data.

Not only does a lot of time elapse between listens, but sometimes a lot of time elapses before I discover music. Yes, it can take me years to buy an album, but it turns out that it's possible for me to miss the existence of music, even from artists I like a great deal.

And so it was that it took me almost a year to realise that Megan Washington (who has reverted back to calling herself just "Washington") had released a new song, Saint Lo.

And it's heavenly.

I thought her last album There There was a major breakthrough and one of the best pop albums I'd heard in a long time. Saint Lo is just one song, but it's possibly even better. Certainly, I became utterly obsessed with it once I found out about it. I bought it on iTunes soon after first hearing it, and played it to death over the next couple of days.

It's moody, it's sensual, and it has a heck of a groove.

I won't go on a rant about the stupidity of an official YouTube account engaging in geoblocking, but the video below might not work for everyone.

So here is a link to a version on Vimeo which is more likely to work for everyone. If you find it as addictive as I do, don't blame me. You have been warned.