Hitting the High Notes

The Dude mentioned Sam Smith in his post earlier today.  I really enjoyed his performance on SNL and have been listening to "Stay With Me" frequently over the past 48 hours.  It isn't surprising that I like this young man's style as I have always appreciated a killer falsetto.  Jordan Knight was my favorite New Kid on the Block for a reason.  (Man did he get up there for Step 3-- "It's just you and me.")  While I was in tween love with Jordan Knight, my mum was obsessed with George Michael, another man with a fantastic falsetto.  We listened to our mum's George Michael cassette tapes so often that I started to dislike his music for a short period of time.  (I think I was mostly freaked out by his song "Mother's Pride."  As The Dude knows, there are a few songs that disturb me to my core.  Number one with a bullet is "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" by The Crash Test Dummies.  I swear to God that song hurts my soul.  Also on the playlist in my personal hell would be "Runaway Train" by Soul Asylum and "Mary Jane's Last Dance" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.  These aren't songs that I dislike.  They are songs I feel queasy about.  And "Mother's Pride" makes me queasy.)  ANYHOW, enough about music that induces nightmares, back to the topic at hand.  After I had a reasonable break from being trapped in the car with my mum and her George Michael jams, I started to appreciate him again.  Some of my very favorite singers are falsetto vocalists, including Jeff Buckley, Art Garfunkel, and Michael Jackson.  And I can't forget another of my mother's favorites-- The Bee Gees/Barry Effin' Gibb.

Art Garfunkel's performance of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and Maxwell's version of "This Woman's Work" never fail to give me chills: