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Norah Jones - Feels Like Home


Aggie87

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It's unfortunate, but this album is destined to have "sophomore jinx" all over it. No way will it sell as many copies as her first one and, because of her great and unexpected success, the critics will be gunning for her.

Still, she should have a long career ahead of her...

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I waited 'til I saw the sun

I don't know why I didn't come

I left you by the house of fun

I don't know why I didn't come

I don't know why I didn't come

When I saw the break of day

I wished that I could fly away

Instead of kneeling in the sand

Catching teardrops in my hand

My heart is drenched in wine

But you'll be on my mind

Forever

Out across the endless sea

I would die in ecstacy

But I'll be a bag of bones

Driving down the road alone

My heart is drenched in wine

But you'll be on my mind

Forever

Something has to make you run

I don't know why I didn't come

I feel as empty as a drum

I don't know why I didn't come

I don't know why I didn't come

I don't know why I didn't come

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It's unfortunate, but this album is destined to have "sophomore jinx" all over it. No way will it sell as many copies as her first one and, because of her great and unexpected success, the critics will be gunning for her.

Still, she should have a long career ahead of her...

My curiosity wouldn't let me be, and I wound up getting the new album yesterday. I've listened to it a couple of times, and I think it's very good. Norah makes good use of electric keyboards on some of the tracks (giving the album a different texture from "Come Away With Me"), and the tempos are more varied than on her first album. The songs are all quite good, her vocals are bewitching (as they were before), and the duet with Dolly Parton is great. On the whole, I think I like "Feels Like Home" better than "Come Away with Me!"

However, I agree with the above statement. I'll be surprised if "Feels Like Home" does half as well as "Come Away With Me."

I was pleasantly suprised, though, as I wasn't expecting too much...

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Thanks for the lyrics 7/4 ... when I read the review and everything I thought she was pulling a Liz Phair ... anyone familiar with the following song off her newest disc?

Note: parental guidance suggested!

----------------------------------------------

H.W.C.

give it to me, don't give it away

don't think about what the others say

my skin's getting clear, my hair's so bright

all you do it fuck me every day and night

you're my secret beauty routine

na na na na, what my body has seen

i am looking good and i'm feeling nice

baby you're the best magazine advice

give me your hot white cum

give me your hot white cum

give me your hot white cum

i'm gonna throw you back down between the sheets

everything is fresher when the day is sweet

in the morning light when you're already on the phone

face it one of these days

without you i'm just another dorian gray

it's the fountain of youth, it's the meaning of life

so hot, so sweet, so whet my appetite

give me your hot white cum

give me your hot white cum

give me your hot white cum

face it one of these days

without you i'm just another dorian gray

it's the fountain of youth, it's the meaning of life

baby you're the best magazine advice

give me your hot white cum

give me your hot white cum

give me your hot white cum

---------------------------------------

No room for confusion there ... and, JS, no room for maturity or self control here!

:excited:

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Liz Phair's been at that game for a while ... No surprise there ... But I sincerely doubt her sincerity in portraying her sincere self on records. :P

Just finished listening to Norah's 2nd ... It flows like a butterfly with no sting at all. I have to agree with Alexander in that this goes over better than her first, but I wonder if I'd say the same a few years from now.

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The Daily Telegraph in the UK, a fairly right-wing, conservative and polite publication today had this feature: Telegraph interview with Norah Jones

It is, like most Telegraph Arts features, fairly genteel and spells things out for Middle England. And I'm not sure if anyone's aware of this but it does confirm that she is, after all, Ravi Shankar's daughter....

Furthermore, it even mentions her boyfriend. Do you think Aric got himself a job on Fleet Street?

By the way, I DO NOT buy the DT.

Just happened to scan the header bar on my way to the Playboy and motors mags.

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New Norah Jones sells 1 mil in 1st week

Wednesday, February 18, 2004 Posted: 3:36 PM EST (2036 GMT)

NEW YORK (AP) -- Norah Jones' "Feels Like Home," the follow-up to her multiplatinum, Grammy-winning debut album, has sold over 1 million copies in its first week, the highest sales debut for an album since 2001.

No act has posted more than 1 million in sales since 'N Sync sold 1.9 million copies of "Celebrity" in the summer of 2001. "Feels Like Home" was released February 10, and for the week ending Sunday, it sold 1,022,149 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

"This is the kind of achievement that one can only expect from a truly original, extraordinary artist like Norah," Bruce Lundvall, head of Blue Note Records, Jones' label, said Wednesday.

"It's not very often that an artist can span so many genres and enjoy such broad appeal. But that's what happens when the music is this good."

Jones' first album, "Come Away With Me," was a surprise hit when it was released in 2002. The album of folky jazz tunes wasn't expected to sell 100,000, but has now sold more than 8 million copies. It also won eight Grammys last year, including album of the year.

It continues to be a strong seller, and actually rose in sales, from about 43,000 in the previous week to 80,000 for the week ending Sunday.

Jones' platinum debut eclipsed a strong debut from rapper Kanye West, whose acclaimed "College Dropout" sold about 441,000 copies.

The Jones record and the Grammys sent more people into record stores: Nielsen SoundScan reported it was the biggest selling week outside of a holiday season week since it began tracking sales in 1991. More than 17 million albums were sold last week, Nielsen SoundScan said.

Plenty of Grammy-winning artists enjoyed a spike in sales. OutKast's "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below," which won album of the year at the February 8 ceremony, sold 275,000 compared with 111,000 a week earlier; Beyonce, who won the most trophies at five, sold 99,000 copies of "Dangerously in Love," up from 49,000 a week earlier.

Luther Vandross' "Dance With My Father," the winner of four Grammys, including song of the year for the title track, sold 58,000, up from 20,000.

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de Village Voice:

For as it was not necessarily prophesied by Karl Rove and Stanley Crouch, so it shall be

The Review of Norah

by Tom Smucker

February 13th, 2004 5:30 PM

Norah Jones

Feels Like Home

Blue Note

And it came to pass that in the new millennium, the son and his retainers rose up out of Texas, and the Court decreed they could ascend the throne of the Capital of Politics, and then there was a great calamity and the people were afraid. And some pundits found the words and actions of this ruler reassuring, while other pundits worried of new dangers, saying, "What is Texas, if it can produce such men?"

And at this same time a young woman also came from Texas to the Capital of Culture in the East, humbly seeking naught but friends and work in jazz clubs and a contract with a small prestigious record label. And she was beautiful and unpretentious and had this voice and could play the piano tastefully and knew of Hoagy Carmichael and Hank Williams. And the wise old men at Blue Note understood that she was onto something, and they brought in Arif Mardin and some real jazz musicians but not too many and allowed the young woman to sing and play with her unknown but talented young friends, and they brought forth a masterpiece.

Come Away With Me began to sell as well as any Blue Note record ever, and then it sold as well as any record in the world. And the people said, "Yes, this young woman reassures us, for she has lived in Texas and New York and she knows about both jazz and country and she knows about what's old and new, and no one else can sing like her and so we shall buy 6 million copies." And there was grumbling that she was only popular with those who were so old they wouldn't download, or too dumb to like good jazz, or too conservative for hip-hop. But young women loved her, and Bruce Lundvall backed her up, and Andre 3000 knew that she was good and had her sing on track 19 of The Love Below.

For she had a voice that was subtle and accessible, yet sexy and sophisticated; naive, yet proficient. And when she played the piano she embellished that voice with licks that referenced Floyd Cramer and Nat Cole and the other instruments never overwhelmed her but were added sparingly with great effect. She and her friends wrote songs both strange and simple with interesting hooks and phrases that sounded like a little bit of jazz and rock, and her voice washed o'er the land.

And so the young woman and her friends went out to tour, but they were too popular for clubs and had to play large halls. And the recording industry was overjoyed and gave her many golden statues and even gave one to Jesse Harris, who wrote her catchy but ambiguous hit single, and he signed with another small prestigious record label and went back to his own band. And then she started on her second record and the people worried. Could it be as good; would so much fame so early make her lose her bearings like Lauryn Hill or Karen Carpenter? How could she maintain that cozy closeness now that she'd won awards and played large halls? But the wise men at Blue Note knew that she was smart and talented and said, "We must be patient, for she has already helped us make so much money we have signed Van Morrison and Al Green."

So she gathered round her boyfriend and the other members of her band, and didn't use Jesse Harris or the jazz musicians from her first recording but brought in Garth Hudson and Levon Helm. And Feels Like Home was more country and folk-rock and sounded less like jazz and lost urban feel. There were conceits and phrases that felt forced and the songs by Townes Van Zandt and Tom Waits and the duet with Dolly Parton didn't fit as well. But "Carnival Town" and "Humble Me" and "The Prettiest Thing" were odd and interesting and there were still those hooky mellow moments and the catchy upbeat opener and the closer with her lyrics to Duke Ellington's "Melancholia," just the piano and that voice. For the voice remained as confident and open as before. And if the choice of songs and beat and instrumentation were sometimes restrictive, still the piano and the voice endured, and the people knew the young woman had survived her fame and would continue. And the critic wondered whether she could become another Willie Nelson and worried that she suffered from Ryan Adams envy and hoped she knew she could become the one Diana Krall, Cassandra Wilson, and Gillian Welch prefigured.

And so the people were relieved, for there were others at that time who were unable to sustain their fame. And in the Capital of Politics were those who sought to bind Texas and New York in fear and anger. But across the land were many who believed the young woman showed there was another way, and she was just beginning so the path was not yet clear. All they knew was that her metaphoric mother Carole King was singing for a senator from Massachusetts.

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The New York Times has this story on Norah Jones in its Thursday edition.

A Hit Record by Norah Jones Buoys Industry

By CHRIS NELSON

Norah Jones has given the ailing music industry a boost as her new album sold more copies during its debut week than any other release has managed to do in more than two and half years.

Ms. Jones's second album, "Feels Like Home" (Blue Note), sold 1,022,000 copies during the week ending Sunday, the best performance since 'N Sync released "Celebrity" in July 2001, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Ms. Jones was not the only musical act to flourish last week, as the hip-hop duo OutKast, the R&B singer Beyoncé and rock groups Evanescence, Coldplay and the White Stripes benefited from their appearances on the Grammy Awards. "The College Dropout" (Roc-A-Fella), the first album by the rapper Kanye West, sold

441,000 copies during its first week of release, putting it second on the SoundScan list. Legal sales of downloadable songs topped two million units for the first time last week. (By contrast Eric Garland, a spokesman

for Big Champagne, a company that tracks file-swapping, estimates that about 250 million songs in the MP3 format are being traded each week through the most popular services for sharing downloads illegally.)

Two anticipated records, a rock album from Courtney Love and a pop album from Kylie Minogue, had disappointing debuts, at 33,000 and 43,000. But sales for the week of Feb. 9 to 15 were the highest of any Valentine's Day week since 1991, when SoundScan began tracking music sales. Sales were up 25 percent over

the same week last year.

"Everybody was expecting that sales would be strong — it's always a strong week," said Rob Sisco, president of Nielsen Music, which operates SoundScan. "But particularly the sales on Norah going over a million and the strength overall, I don't think it was anything anybody was expecting."

Bruce Lundvall, president and chief executive for jazz and classics at EMI Music, which owns Blue Note, said that Ms. Jones, a jazz artist who has achieved pop star numbers, had the potential to "change the whole musical culture of what people are listening to, and wanting to buy."

The strong week comes as the music industry is trying to recover from a three-year slump that record labels trace largely to Internet downloading and CD copying. Year-to-date sales for 2004 are up 13 percent over the same

period last year, continuing an upward trend in the last quarter of 2003. Still, on Tuesday, the Recording Industry Association of America continued to fight online music file-swapping in court, filing lawsuits against 531 computer users.

The industry is still suffering through major restructuring. A merger of the major label groups owned by Sony and Bertelsmann is awaiting approval by regulators. Time Warner is in the process of selling Warner Music Group to private investors led by Edgar Bronfman Jr. And Tower Records recently filed for bankruptcy protection.

Very difficult to miss Norah Jones here these days. She will be appearing at concerts next April in Paris and her image graces the frontpage of quite a number of magazines. Photos of Norah Jones are even displayed on the Paris public transport buses.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I imagine everyone's been dying for a Norah update ... here's a blurb from Entertainment Weekly:

'Home' Fires Burning

Norah Jones spends a fourth week at No. 1. Jessica Simpson's ''In This Skin,'' rereleased with extras, zooms to No. 2 by Gary Susman

There's no keeping up with Norah Jones. Her ''Feels Like Home,'' which has held the top spot on the Billboard album chart since its release and sold nearly 2 million copies, spent a fourth week at No. 1 and moved another 204,000 units, according to SoundScan. Her nearest challenger, surprisingly, was Jessica Simpson, whose eight-month-old album ''In This Skin'' vaulted 14 spots to No. 2 (160,000 sold), thanks to a rerelease that included extra tracks and DVD footage of the ''Newlyweds'' star. Another chart mainstay, Evanescence's ''Fallen,'' celebrated its one-year anniversary on the chart by climbing one spot to No. 3 and selling another 118,000 copies.

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Yes Snorah even made a nice product placement in this week's "Alias" show.

At the end there was one of those dulcet moments and sure enough one of her tunes plays in the background. And no it wasn't an elevator scene.

I did get to see her sister conducting an Indo orchestra and playing some mean Sitar during a PBS George Harrison tribute last week. :tup

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