Let’s dedicate a thread to those special individual music creators who compose and perform their own music, where performance includes at least the vocals, but preferably also some part of the instrumentation, and musical composition is something like 90-99% theirs out of everything they release. Note: This is about individuals with individual stage names, not bands (plenty of bands out there who compose their own music, that’s not what this is about).
William Fitzsimmons
Found him in a chillout remix of “I Don’t Feel It Anymore”, which he performs with Priscilla Ahn on his post-divorce album “The Sparrow and The Crow”. First song that blew me away with the realism of the center image on my Tannoy monitors after I switched from onboard sound to an Audigy 2 ZS card.
Later enjoyed and bought a lot of his discography. Random additional example:
Which also led me to: Priscilla Ahn
She has a few children’s music albums but also “regular”/general-audience music, with a sound character like a soft cushion to sink into at the end of a f’ed up day:
Damien Rice
Composes and sings passionate/emotional folk-pop, he’s equally amazing on the music and the poetry sides. His most widely known song, featured in the movie “Closer”, would be this:
It’s strange to me how hard it is to find studio-recorded songs that Lisa sings with him now, it’s like only the live bits were left online after they stopped working together, e.g.:
And of course once I heard that sweet velvety voice in his songs, I wanted more, so I searched and found that she was a very good singer and songwriter on her own: Lisa Hannigan
Another one of the very few male voices I regularly listen to is Sam Beam a.k.a. Iron & Wine, possibly the most “care-giving” sleep-inducing voice I know, better than even Hope Sandoval (in that she’s only dreamy but not “care-giving”). Best songs are on the bittersweet mortality-themed “Our Endless Numbered Days” album, but he has many other good ones as well.
Including the one that made the ending to S4 of “House M.D.” that much more devastating because I already knew the song and how great it is, and “Cutthroat Bitch” was probably my favorite character that season.
That’sss… halfway into stand-up comedy, but I can say this guy would be perfect for my workplace cafeteria - sure would take our minds off the work real quick.
