WHY ME?

LINDA MARTIN

SONGWRITER: JHONNY LOGAN

COUNTRY: IRELAND

ALBUM: WHY ME?

LABEL: COLUMBIA

GENRE: POP

YEAR: 1992

Linda Martin(born 27 March 1952) is a singer and television presenter from Northern Ireland. She is best known in Europe as the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest in 1992 with the song "Why Me?", and in Ireland as a member of the 1970s/1980s band, Chips.

She participated in the National Song Contest four times as a member of Chips, however they did not score successfully. She participated another four times in the contest as a soloist and once more as part of the group "Linda Martin and Friends". With nine participations, she has been the most frequent entrant in the National Song Contest's history. She won the contest twice, going on to represent Ireland twice at the Eurovision Song Contest.

The first of these victories was in 1984 with the song "Terminal 3", written by Johnny Logan(under his real name Séan Sherrard). The song came 2nd in the final, being beaten by 8 points. "Terminal 3" reached No.7 in the Irish charts. The second victory was in 1992 when her song "Why Me" (also written by Logan) went on to win the final in Sweden. This became Ireland's 4th victory in the Eurovision Song Contest and the song reached No.1 in the Irish charts as well as becoming a hit in many European countries.

Martin was, at the time, one of only three artists to finish both first and second at Eurovision, behind Lys Assia and Gigliola Cinquetti. Since then, only Elisabeth Andreassen and Dima Bilan have achieved this, raising the number to five. Martin was the first of the three artists to finish second first and first second, matched only later by Bilan.

"Why Me?" was the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 1992, performed for Ireland by Linda Martin.

The result was also notable as the song was composed by Johnny Logan, who had previously won the Contest with "What's Another Year?" and the self-composed "Hold Me Now". Logan is, to date, the only person to win the Contest with a song composed for him, win the Contest with his own song and then compose another winner.

The song itself is a ballad, which builds in intensity towards the end. The singer describes her thoughts about her lover and asks why she is the lucky one to have his love, as against anyone else.

The song was performed seventeenth on the night, following the United Kingdom's Michael Ball with One Step Out of Time and preceding Denmark's Kenny Lübcke[da] & Lotte Nilsson[da] with "Alt det som ingen ser". At the close of voting, it had received 155 points, placing 1st in a field of 23.

The song was succeeded in 1993 as winner by Niamh Kavanagh, also representing Ireland, with "In Your Eyes".

Logan covered the song on his 2001 album, Reach for Me.

Sometimes I watch you passing by my window

And sometimes I watch you passing through my dreams

And sometimes, when I look at you

You take my breath away

Sometimes I try and understand your reasons

You choose to feel the way you feel about me

And sometimes, when I turn around

And you're there, like today - I wanna say

Why me

I look at you and I get to feeling

Why me

I know it true but I can't believe it

I keep on wondering why

My love shines in your eyes

Why me

I look at you and I ask myself

Why me

Sometimes I lie awake and watch you sleeping

And listen to the beating of your heart

And sometimes, when you're lying there

You take my breath away and I wanna say

Why me

I look at you and I get to feeling

Why me

I know it true but I can't believe that it's me

Who's gonna be holding you in my arms tonight

And why it's me

Who's gonna be the one to make you feel all right

Tonight

Why me

I look at you and I get to feeling

Why me

I know it true but I can't believe it

I keep on wondering why

My love shines in your eyes

Why me

I look at you and I ask myself

Why me

Why me.

ON SATURDAY AFTERNOONS IN 1963

RICKIE LEE JONES

SONGWRITER: RICKIE LEE JONES

COUNTRY: U. S. A.

ALBUM: RICKIE LEE JONES

LABEL: WARNER BROS

GENRE: ROCK

YEAR: 1979

Rickie Lee Jones(born November 8, 1954) is an American vocalist, musician, songwriter, producer, actress and narrator. Over the course of a career that spans five decades, Jones has recorded in various musical styles including rock, R&B, blues, pop, soul, and jazz.

Jones is a two-time Grammy Award winner. Additionally, she was listed at number 30 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women in Rock & Roll in 1999. Her album Pirates was number 49 on NPR's list of the 150 Greatest Albums Made by Women.

After Ghostyhead, Jones largely retired from public view and admitted that she had battled writer's block. She spent much of her time at her home in Tacoma, Washington, tending her garden and bringing up her now-teenage daughter Charlotte.

Released on the independent label V2 in October 2003, The Evening of My Best Day featured influences from jazz, Celtic folk, blues, R&B, rock, and gospel, and spawned a successful and lengthy spurt of touring. The album peaked at No. 189 on the Billboard 200. She invited punk bass icon Mike Watt(the Minutemen, Iggy Pop) to perform on "It Takes You There", while "Ugly Man" was a direct aim at the George Bush 'regime' evoking, with an anthem-like Hugh Masekela arrangement, what she termed "the Black Panther horns", and calling for "revolution, everywhere that you're not looking, revolution."

Renewed interest in Jones led to the three-disc anthology Duchess of Coolsville: An Anthology, released through reissue specialists Rhino in June 2005. A lavish package, the alphabetically arranged release featured album songs, live material, covers, and demos, and featured essays by Jones as well as various collaborators, as well as tributes from artists including Randy Newman, Walter Becker, Quincy Jones, and Tori Amos.

Also in 2005, Jones was invited to take part in her boyfriend and collaborator Lee Cantelon's music version of his book The Words, a book of the words of Christ, set into simple chapters and themes. Cantelon's idea was to have various artists recite the text over primal rock music, but Jones elected to try something that had never been done, to improvise her own impression of the texts, melody and lyric, in stream of consciousness sessions, rather than read Jesus' words. The sessions were recorded at an artist's loft on Exposition Boulevard in Culver City. When Cantelon could no longer finish the project, Jones picked it up as her own record and hired Rob Schnaf to finish the production at Sunset Sound in 2007, and the result was The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard, released on the independent New West Records in February 2007. It included "Circle in the Sand", recorded for the soundtrack to the film Friends With Money(2006), for which Jones also cut "Hillbilly Song". The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard debuted at No. 158 on the Billboard 200 and No. 12 on the Top Independent Albums tally. Writer Ann Powers included this on her list of Grammy-worthy CDs for 2007.

For her next project, Jones opted to finish half-written songs dating back as far as 1986 ("Wild Girl") as well as include new ones (the 2008-penned "The Gospel of Carlos, Norman and Smith", "Bonfires"). Working closely with long-time collaborator David Kalish, with whom Jones first worked on 1981's Pirates, Jones released Balm in Gilead on the Fantasy label in November 2009. The album also included a new recording of "The Moon Is Made of Gold", a song written by her father Richard Loris Jones in 1954. Ben Harper, Victoria Williams, Jon Brion, Alison Krauss and the late Vic Chesnutt all made contributions to the album.

In May 2010 Jones performed at the Sydney Opera House as part of the Vivid Live festival.

On September 18, 2012, Jones released The Devil You Know on Fantasy/Concord Records. The Devil You Know includes a collection of covers produced by Ben Harper, including a solo version of "Sympathy for the Devil".

In 2015, Jones released her álbum The Other Side of Desire, and the single "Jimmy Choos" which references the shoe brand. A documentary film, Rickie Lee Jones: The Other Side of Desire, on the making of the album, was also released.

In 2018, Jones' autobiography Rickie Lee was released.

In 2019, Jones released a single of the Paul Rodgers/Simon Kirke song, "Bad Company", followed by her álbum Kicks which included "Bad Company" and cover versions of many other songs.

She played at the Glastonbury Festival in June 2019.

On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Rickie Lee Jones among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.

The most as you'll ever go

Is back where you used to know

If grown-ups could laugh this slow

Where as you watch the hour snow

Years may go by

So hold on to your special friend

Here, you'll need something to keep her in :

"Now you stay inside this foolish grin ... "

Though any day your secrets end

Then again

Years may go by

You saved your own special friend

'Cuz here you need something to hide her in

And you stay inside that foolish grin

When everyday now secrets end

Oh and then again

Years may go by.

MISTY

SARAH VAUGHAN

SONGWRITER: ERROLL GARNER & JOHNNY BURKE

LIVE: FROM SWEDEN

COUNTRY: U. S. A.

ALBUM: BROKEN HEARTED MELODY

LABEL: MERCURY RECORDS

GENRE: JAZZ

YEAR: 1964

Sarah Lois Vaughan(March 27, 1924 – April 3, 1990) was an American jazz singer.

Nicknamed "Sassy" and "The Divine One", she won four Grammy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award. She was given an NEA Jazz Masters Award in 1989. Critic Scott Yanow wrote that she had "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century".

Parallels have been drawn between Vaughan's voice and that of opera singers. Jazz Singer Betty Carter said that with training Vaughan could have "...gone as far as Leontyne Price." Bob James, Vaughan's musical director in the 1960s said that "...the instrument was there. But the knowledge, the legitimacy of that whole world were not for her ... But if the aria were in Sarah's range she could bring something to it that a classically trained singer could not."

In a chapter devoted to Vaughan in his book Visions of Jazz(2000), critic Gary Giddins described her as the "...ageless voice of modern jazz – of giddy postwar virtuosity, biting wit and fearless caprice". He concluded by saying that "No matter how closely we dissect the particulars of her talent ... we must inevitably end up contemplating in silent awe the most phenomenal of her attributes, the one she was handed at birth, the voice that happens once in a lifetime, perhaps once in several lifetimes."

Her voice had wings: luscious and tensile, disciplined and nuanced, it was as thick as cognac, yet soared off the beaten path like an instrumental solo ... that her voice was a four-octave muscle of infinite flexibility made her disarming shtick all the more ironic." – Gary Giddins

Her obituary in The New York Times described her as a "singer who brought an operatic splendor to her performances of popular standards and jazz." Jazz singer Mel Tormé said that she had "...the single best vocal instrument of any singer working in the popular field." Her ability was envied by Frank Sinatra who said, "Sassy is so good now that when I listen to her I want to cut my wrists with a dull razor." New York Times critic John S. Wilson said in 1957 that she possessed "what may well be the finest voice ever applied to jazz." It was close to its peak until shortly before her death at the age of 66. Late in life she retained a "youthful suppleness and remarkably luscious timbre" and was capable of the projection of coloratura passages described as "delicate and ringingly high".

Vaughan had a large vocal range of soprano through a female baritone, exceptional body, volume, a variety of vocal textures, and superb and highly personal vocal control. Her ear and sense of pitch were almost perfect, and there were no difficult intervals.

In her later years her voice was described as a "burnished contralto" and as her voice deepened with age her lower register was described as having "shades from a gruff baritone into a rich, juicy contralto". Her use of her contralto register was likened to "dipping into a deep, mysterious well to scoop up a trove of buried riches." Musicologist Henry Pleasants noted, "Vaughan who sings easily down to a contralto low D, ascends to a pure and accurate [soprano] high C."

Vaughan's vibrato was described as "an ornament of uniquely flexible size, shape and duration," a vibrato described as "voluptuous" and "heavy" Vaughan was accomplished in her ability to "fray" or "bend" notes at the extremities of her vocal range. It was noted in a 1972 performance of Leslie Bricusse and Lionel Bart's "Where Is Love?" that "In mid-tune she began twisting the song, swinging from the incredible cello tones of her bottom register, skyrocketing to the wispy pianissimos of her top."

She held a microphone in live performance, using its placement as part of her performance. Her placings of the microphone allowed her to complement her volume and vocal texture, often holding the microphone at arm's length and moving it to alter her volume.

She frequently used the song "Send in the Clowns" to demonstrate her vocal abilities in live performance. The performance was called a "three-octave tour de force of semi-improvisational pyrotechnics in which the jazz, pop and operatic sides of her musical personality came together and found complete expression" by The New York Times.

Singers influenced by Vaughan include Phoebe Snow, Anita Baker, Sade, and Rickie Lee Jones. Singers Carmen McRae and Dianne Reeves both recorded tribute albums to Vaughan following her death; Sarah: Dedicated to You(1991) and The Calling: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan(2001) respectively.

Though usually considered a jazz singer, Vaughan avoided classifying herself as one. She discussed the term in a 1982 interview for Down Beat:

I don't know why people call me a jazz singer, though I guess people associate me with jazz because I was raised in it, from way back. I'm not putting jazz down, but I'm not a jazz singer ... I've recorded all kinds of music, but (to them) I'm either a jazz singer or a blues singer. I can't sing a blues – just a right-out blues – but I can put the blues in whatever I sing. I might sing 'Send In the Clowns' and I might stick a little bluesy part in it, or any song. What I want to do, music-wise, is all kinds of music that I like, and I like all kinds of music. 

Look at me, I'm as helpless as a kitten up a tree

And I feel like I'm clingin' to a cloud

I can' t understand

I get misty, just holding your hand

Walk my way

And a thousand violins begin to play

Or it might be the sound of your hello

That music I hear

I get misty, the moment you're near

You can see that you're leading me on

But is just what I want you to do

Don't you notice how hopelessly I'm lost

That's why I'm following you

On my own

When I wander through this wonderland alone

Never knowing my right foot from my left

My hat from my glove

I'm too misty, and too much in love

I'm just too misty

And too much in love.

YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU

HELEN FORREST

SONGWRITERS: MONACO MCCARTHY & LUTHER HENDERSON

COUNTRY: U. S. A.

ALBUM: NOW AND FOREVER

LABEL: BELL RECORDS

GENRE: SWING

YEAR: 1983

Helen Forrest(born Helen Fogel, April 12, 1917 – July 11, 1999) was an American singer of traditional pop and swing music. She served as the "girl singer" for three of the most popular big bands of the Swing Era(Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, and Harry James), thereby earning a reputation as "the voice of the name bands."

Forrest was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey on April 12, 1917. Her parents, Louis and Rebecca Fogel, were Jewish. Her father died from influenza when Helen was an infant so she was raised by her mother, who often blamed her husband's death on Helen's birth. She believed God had taken her husband because she had wished so much for a baby girl. Helen had three older brothers: Harry, Ed, and Sam. In Helen's early teen years, the family relocated to Brooklyn. Her mother married a house painter, whom Helen disliked. Soon, Helen's mother and stepfather turned the family's home into a brothel. At 14, Helen was nearly raped by her stepfather; she defended herself with a kitchen knife, injuring him. Following this, Helen's mother permitted her to live with her piano teacher, Honey Silverman, and her family. While teaching her piano, Honey noticed Helen's singing ability and encouraged her to focus on singing instead. Anxious to find a career in singing, Helen dropped out of high school to pursue her dream.

At the peak of her career, Helen Forrest was the most popular female singer in the United States. Because of her work with the bands of Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, and Harry James, she is known as "the voice of the name bands" and is regarded by some as the best female vocalist of the swing era. In addition, AllMusic describes Forrest as "a performer that some might not consider a jazz vocalist, but one with exceptional ability to project lyrics and also an excellent interpreter." Also, IMDb describes Forrest: "though Helen was not, perhaps, a jazz singer in the truest sense, she brought to her songs a wistful 'girl-next-door' quality" through her "femininity and warmth of her voice and the clear, emotional phrasing of her lyrics." In his book The Big Bands, writer George Simon wrote, "Helen was a wonderfully warm and natural singer."

Over the course of her career, Helen Forrest recorded more than 500 songs. In 2001, she was posthumously inducted into the now-defunct Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.

 You made me love you

 I didn't wanna do it

 I didn't wanna do it

 You made me want you

 And all the time you knew it

 I guess you always knew it

 You made me happy sometimes

 You made me glad

But there were times

You made me feel so bad

 You made me cry for

 I didn't wanna tell you

 I didn't wanna tell you

 I want some love that's true

gimmie, gimmie what i cry for

You know you've got the brand of kisses

 That i'd die for

You know you made me love you.