I was always going to love Françoise Hardy. She’s beautiful and French and her music has appeared amongst Wes Anderson’s best work. I want her to draw me like one of her French boys.

There’s a lot to be said for music from 60 years ago to which you don’t have a pre-existing relationship and love with a sense of family or nostalgia. As soon as I put her 1962 debut on, it was always going to be right. There’s a euro melancholy and a beauty to the richness of her voice that’s absolutely a bit of me.

Even with my high school understanding of French, there is so much to enjoy in the playful lyrics and flower power era instrumentation.

I’ve also found out that Hardy is still with us and somehow survived lymphatic cancer and being in a coma to then make a full recovery. I hope she is well and happy.

This week, I have been delving in the era of the Top 8 on MySpace with Emmy The Great. While I remember her work on Lightspeed Champion’s Falling Off The Lavender Bridge, this was the first time I’d listened to the English singer/songwriter.

There’s a certain (and I’m sorry for using this word) tweeness present in Emmy’s work albeit brilliant and poetic at the same time. It reminded me of all of the best stuff I was listening to over a decade ago when I was cool and current about these things. In hindsight, it’s odd that someone so prolific and talented slipped under my personal radar. There’s a lot of stuff to unpack across her albums, collabs and work on Austenland which is to be admired.

If Emmy The Great isn’t someone you’re aware of then it is certainly worth asking why.

This week I have been listening to Tracy Chapman. Now we all know Chapman right? It a god-given right that we are born with some awareness there but each person has their own story.

I believe I first got into Tracy Chapman when I was at university because someone I fancied who had been on a gap year gave me a copy of her greatest hits. They’re married now, not to me, and the whole album had pretty much been wiped from my mind until I listened through this week and returned to those days, half a lifetime ago now and was lost in the luxury of her voice.

There’s a lot to be said for Fast Car and Talkin’ but there’s so much more to discover in Tracy Chapman’s back catalog too and this was my opportunity to dig in.

While I may not find myself listening to this every week, there’s something so powerful and joyous in the music she makes that I can’t help but love.

This week, I have been listening to singer/songwriter/actress, Ingrid Michaelson. While I am now very interested in tracking down her romcom, Humor Me, it’s more a case of rumour me when it comes to the stories that she has started working on a musical adaptation of The Notebook.

While it’s clear from her background that Michaelson is very much a twirley, there is a MPD element to her music that means it wasn’t too much of a surprise to discover she had worked with Zooey Deschanel – chief kook.

It’s on songs like The Lotto, Be OK and To Begin Again that her voice shines through, and obviously, that is what we are here for. There is something incredibly charming in her songwriting and that’s a rare thing.

A playlist of my Music Jar 2022 is available here

This week, I have been listening to Yebba – an artist I hadn’t heard of and was unlikely to if it wasn’t for Becca’s recommendation. She’s a lot better at

identifying these new trends in music and knowing about what is cool. 

Yebba is a singer/songwriter from West Memphi who has worked with Sam Smith, Stormzy and Mark Ronson (amongst many others) but it wasn’t until now that I had the chance to listen to her. 

Her debut album, Dawn, was released in 2021 and is a beautifully composed and eclectic mix of songs including Love Came Down, All I Ever Wanted and my personal favourite, October Sky. She worked alongside everyone’s favourite DJ, Zane Lowe, on the project which speaks volumes about the calibre of her performances and general skill. It’s fair to say that her voice is amazing.

Yebba is definitely one to watch and I’m glad to have been introduced to what she does. 

This week has been my triumphant joy to listen to nothing but Paramore.
Now listen, due to me being so indie that it hurt at the time, I wasn’t allowed to listen to Paramore at the time although I do remember “Barry the Castle” (Brick By Boring Brick) as a colleague called it being played on Radio One on repeat in 2009. It turns out, that like now listening to Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance and the like, I missed out on some fun and heartfelt music that was only a hop away from what I was into anyway.

It definitely benefits us all that the lines in the sand have been washed away when it comes to music tastes. It’s never been as fine to listen to whatever you want as it is now and that is a wonderful thing.

For those of you who still have questions, Paramore are originally from Tennessee and formed in the mid-2000s to change hair forever. Their style and sound has changed over the years but there is no mistaking a Hayley Williams vocal. While my limited Google searching shows there have been some personnel changes over the years, something beautiful and consistent remains, and that is a dedication to great hooks, pogo ready pop punk and bright colours.

This week, I have been enjoying the music of Brandi Carlile. Carlile, from Washington, Seattle is a legend in the field of Grey’s Anatomy as well as being a gay icon. Whatever you do, don’t get her mixed up with Belinda Carlisle, who performed Heaven Is A Place On Earth and is probably also a gay icon.

She’s one of those artists that I knew the name of but never took the opportunity to listen to. That’s what the Music Jar is all about though – finding out more about artists that I should know more about and expanding my knowledge on music away from my go-tos.
While this might not necessarily be a bit of me, I can appreciate the space that Brandi has formed in the world and how admired she is as a result.

Songs like You and Me On The Rock and The Joke do a fine job of setting the tone on a legacy of music that sits behind Carlile but it isn’t immediately for me. That’s absolutely fine. I’m glad I learnt something this week and that’s the very least I can hope for.

This week, I have been lost in my very own indie movie with the help of the bird and the bee – stylised in lowercase for hipster cool emphasis. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my boyfriend, Scott Rose, for making me aware of this group.

The pair from Los Angeles are notably successful in their own rights but it’s the coming together (right now, over me) that truly makes this project as special as it is. I got the sense that the project is intended to be un, ad that the pair of them take the work they do seriously, and are fantastic at it, but the joy they have for the music they create is clear. A part of this comes down to their Interpreting the Masters series, where they cover the works of unlikely other groups including Van Halen and Hall & Oates.

Outside of their work together, Inara George ha recorded four albums – she’s the bird element of the collaboration by the way. Greg Kurstin – the bee – has worked as a producer and multi-instrumentalist with a range of artists including Sia, Kendrick Lamar and Foo Fighters.

I could happily accept the bird and the bee into the league of music that I regularly keep going. It’s the sound of a beautiful day and a walk with someone you love. It’s ice cream and a coffee. There’s the sound of the holden hour and staying up into the early hours of the morning all at once.

I would thoroughly recommend putting them into your rotation.

This week, I corrected a twenty-five year error on my part by listening to Lauryn Hill. While I may have been exposed to The Fugees in the past, it’s not the same as the might of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

Lauryn Hill is credited not just as breaking down barriers for women in music but also for being one of the greatest rappers of all time. Neither of those accolades are to be taken lightly and after listening to an album that hasn’t aged a day and reading up on her journey, I am inclined to agree. There’s something so natural to her flow and such beauty to her voice that there is no question that Lauryn Hill was destined for one thing.
She was even able to recognise what was important and step away from the music industry when the time was right to her.

To produce something so incredible and then choose to stand back is a true reflection of her, and like anyone with only a fraction of their ability at our disposal, is only ever going to leave us wanting more. What a talent.

This week I have mostly been riding my skateboard and drinking orange and cranberry because it has been the turn of Stevie Nicks. We all know Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac but she also wrote a league of stuff herself and in particular, her debut album, Bella Donna, deserves to be heralded as one of the greatest debuts of all time.
Let’s forget about me listening through all of her discography waiting for Holiday Road to come on, only to discover that it’s by Lindsey Buckingham.

Now Stevie Nicks is one of the coolest musicians in the world and has a voice that is so identifiable, and with such a sense of promise and nostalgia for me, that it was clear this was not going to be a tough listen or a tough week to indulge in. From the opening strains of Bella Donna, I knew I was in for a treat and the various feature performances she has made in more recent years are also not to be sniffed at. It speaks volumes that everyone wants to work with her, from Miley Cyrus to Shania Twain to Maroon 5 (but she can’t be held responsible for that last one).

Her thrilling vocal takes, dreamy floating essence and power are not to be overestimated. It’s made me look at Fleetwood Mac in a new way, even if Rumours is always going to be better than Tusk (to me).

It’s songs like Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around, Rooms On Fire and Leather and Lace that confirm to me that Stevie Nicks deserves the reverence to which she is held.