Chappell Roan, “Good Luck, Babe!”

The inaugural artist for this series is hard not to like (at least for me).  She is gorgeous in the campy way drag queens are, but with a soaring voice and sense of humor.  The drumbeat on GOOD LUCK, BABE! reminded me of BILLE JEAN and it has a moody 80s vibe all through it.  The lyrics are great – the rhyme of “truth” with “sunroof” is fantastic.  The image of her girlfriend with her head in her hands, “nothing more than his wife” is a little bitter, but I wrote a lot of cynical songs when my heart got broken too.

BUT: My continuing quibble with contemporary recorded music is the 1) over-use of compression (make everything LOUD) and 2) the over-use of effects (reverb & auto-tune) on vocals.  This seems to be  particular sound mainly in pop recordings;  I’ll look at contemporary jazz down the road and see if the same offenses hold true.

I always always ALWAYS want to hear the human being in the recording, not the studio, not the technology or the producer.  Let me hear the guitar strings squeak or the voice crack.  Let me hear the room being recorded in.  I love Cassandra Wilson’s New Moon Daughter for this reason.  Billie Eilish, too, accomplishes this with her highly-intimate mic style (a hopeful sign for critical divas like me).

Chappell Roan seems to use all the artifice of her look to ironically highlight a sincere humanity underneath all the makeup.  I wonder if one day she’ll make recordings that let us really hear the same humanity.

Let me know your thoughts.  (I’m nervous expressing mine!)

Love,

Gwen

PS.  Video commentary below.  It’s blocked in Belarus, Russia.  I’m okay with that.  😉

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