The last foreign-born ex-TV actress to crash upon our shores with songs of female angst was named Alanis Morissette. Now comes Imbruglia, a former teenage star of the hit Australian soap Neighbours, who launched her pop career on MTV with a spicy video of her debut ditty, "Torn." Already a multimillion-selling single in Europe, the song finds the waifish beauty of Italian descent trilling lines such as "I'm cold and I am ashamed/ lying naked on the floor." Like Morissette, the 23-year-old Imbruglia sounds vexed by men and her own tendency to fall into unhappy, dependent relationships. In declaring her independence, she looks back angrily, dealing lyric bruisings to ex-lovers in such songs as "Big Mistake" and "Leave Me Alone." This is an impressive debut, to be sure. But Imbruglia never quite attains Morissette's heights of impassioned fury. Call it Alanis lite. (RCA)
Rita Coolidge
Like her contemporaries Carly Simon and Linda Ronstadt, Coolidge, 53, has developed a deeper, more emotional (and better) singing style as she has aged. So it's not surprising that the weakest track on this pop-Nashville album is the anachronistic, sexist "Shoo Rah," in which she sings about a guy who's "everybody's baby/ he breaks their hearts but always leaves them with a smile." Coolidge's maturity serves her better on the nearly gospel passion of "Without Love" and "I've Been Thinking About You." And "I'll Remember You," while it isn't the Johnny Mercer classic that served June Christy so well in the 1950s, is a substantial tune by veteran pop songwriters Laura Satterfield, Monty Byron and David Newhauser.
While this album was recorded in Nashville, Coolidge has never been that country. Her strength, as this album confirms, is soft rock and ballads. They show that she hasn't lost her sultry, insinuating way with a romantic pop song. (Innerworks)
A NATALIE IMBRUGLIA A polished newcomer explores the "Torn" regions of her heart.
Chris Whitley
Recorded on a two-track tape machine set up in the barn of his father's Vermont farm, with Whitley accompanying himself on a National steel guitar and banjo, Dirt Floor is as musically raw and basic as the title implies. With nine of Whitley's unadorned country blues and ballads, it is certainly a startling departure from the loud, sharp-edged electric guitar bursts on his 1995 release Din of Ecstasy, which had him veering toward heavy metalville. By powering down, Whitley has tapped into some deep emotional reserves; in his voice and in his guitar playing are ghostly echoes both of black southern blues and ancient Celtic hill music. Logging less than 30 minutes playing time, the only flaw in Dirt Floor is its brevity. (Messenger)
Cledus T. Judd (no relation)
The inspired title track, a send-up of Deana Carter's "Did I Shave My Legs for This?" is the highlight of this comedy album, but Judd (no relation to you-know-who) also duets with Buck Owens on "First Redneck on the Internet," a laugh-inspiring takeoff on those satire-ready obsessives, computer junkies. The rest of the album is fun too, including "Hip Hop & Honky Tonk" and "Mindy McCready," a parody of Alan Jackson's "Little Bitty" that lets Cledus indulge his mild obsession with McCready. Unlike Ray Stevens, Riders in the Sky and the Austin Lounge Lizards, his main rivals as Nashville satirists go, Judd can't sing. His pinched tones come no closer to being musical than the caterwauling Candice Bergen does with Motown tunes on Murphy Brown. But Judd (born Barry Poole and raised in a small Georgia town) is consistently funny, even if his wit is more generic Jeff Foxworthy redneck humor than real satire much of the time.
He does have one glaring fault: He's too soft on his subjects. None of the targets of his parodies can be all that offended, and throughout this bubba-bashing album, he never once mentions Bill Clinton or Paula Jones. (Razor & Tie)
>Sean "Puffy" Combs
POWER PUFF
As a writer, producer and performer (stage name: Puff Daddy), Sean "Puffy" Combs, 28, has become rap's man of the moment. One of his most recent recordings is a remix of Mo-town's early Jackson 5 hit, 1969's "I Want You Back," in which he put a '90s-style hip-hop sound to the old vocal by Michael and his brothers. The song is part of Motown 40 Forever, a new anthology celebrating the label's 40th anniversary.
When did you first hear "I Want You Back"?
I was a kid at my aunt's house, and I was watching the Jackson 5 on a television show. I had just gotten into music, and they were young kids who looked like me.
How did Motown influence you?
Motown is where it all began, the dream for a young black person to be an entrepreneur in the music industry and control the destiny of music.
Does it bother you when people criticize you for sampling [borrowing snippets of] old records?
It doesn't bother me at all. Eighty percent of hip hop has samples in it. That's just a formula for our music. That's the foundation of hip hop.
Is it true you'll try acting next?
It's something I've always wanted to do, but I was a little too shy to do it. I'm still a little shy, but I'm trying to get out of it and take lessons and see how it goes from there.
- Contributors:
- Steve Dougherty,
- Ralph Novak,
- Jeremy Helligar.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
