No, not that one. I’m speaking of course of that guilty pleasure. The thing that most of us keep away from public knowledge due to embarasment or some other benign reason, we all have them and mine is a fondness for the 60’s and 70’s folk singer Melanie.
So I know its not cool or in at the moment but the sheer joy and innocence of the woman’s singing delights me. Why? How the hell should I know. Recently folk has been making a come back with talented and incredibly young stars like Laura Marling and Alessi’s Ark. I’m among the first to extol the virtues of both of these young artists along side other new exponents of the genre Iron and Wine, Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver. Yet I keep coming back to the 60’s in particular Melanie. I know in my head that there is little lifter her above the crowd she doesn’t have the jaded intellectualism of Leonard Cohen the direct brilliance of Bob Dylan or the disarming honesty and wit of Joni Mitchell its just joy, pure energetic, innocent, joy.
I guess, the first time I discovered the folk scene I was looking for great lyricists, this time I’ve been driven back there by the second coming of the synth culture. I didn’t enjoy the 80’s much when they were happening, I wasn’t that old then but I didn’t much like the tinny synth sound at the time I hated the clothes in retrospect and I’m retreating in fear now that its all coming back again. Are we going to further disgrace the Romantics by bringing in the new, new romantics, whose ideas can be entirely theatre and completely lacking in even the smear of substance that the new romantics had. Hopefully we’ll hit a 90’s revival in a stupidly quick fashion.
Still I have my emerging UK folk scene and I’ll always have Melanie to take away the rage at the 80’s with pure joy.
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