Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CXLVI--Norah Jones: Don't Know Why

A little known yet completely uninteresting fact about emaycee is that that he loves him some female vocalists--and from Rosanne Cash to Mary Chapin Carpenter to Reba McEntire to Patty Loveless, from Joni Mitchell to Carole King to Janet Jackson to Liz Phair, and from girl groups like The Angels, The Go-Gos, and The Bangles, he's had plenty of good ones to choose from.  So he never had a chance from the very first time he listened to this week's tune--and especially when you throw in that the singer in question is both a brunette and beautiful...

Norah Jones was born Geetali Norah Shankar--and for those of you who know your music you'll note her birth surname is the same as that of Ravi Shankar, her father and famed Indian sitarist whose influence on sixties music (thanks largely to George Harrison) you either loved or hated.  Jones was largely raised by her mother, concert promoter Sue Jones, in Grapevine, Texas where she honed her craft in high school and college.  In the early 2000s she moved to New York City, developed a reputation as a jazz chanteuse, and released her first album, Come Away with Me in 2002.  It would go on to reach #1 on the Billboard 200, win five Grammy Awards, and eventually sell over 27 million copies.  It also launched quite the career for Jones--she's since released five more albums (four of which went platinum), sold 25 million more records, won four more Grammy Awards, and had numerous fabulously successful world tours.  She's collaborated with too many artists to count, done some incredible cover versions (her version of Randy Newman's "I Think It's Going to Rain Today" literally brings tears to my eyes), and acted in a few movies.  Be willing to bet that not too many other folks from Grapevine, Texas have had quite the career success that Ms. Jones has...

Also released in 2002, "Don't Know Why" was the first single from Jones' debut album.  The song would only reach #30 (most assuredly with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100, but would go on to win Grammy's for both Record of the Year and Song of the Year.  Surprisingly, for all the success Ms. Jones has had in her musical career, it is the only single of hers to crack the top 40.

While I love the underlying motif of the song--a woman has chosen not to meet someone she truly cares for at a rendezvous and really doesn't know why (hence the title) though she is already ruing it and knows she probably will for the rest of her life--it's Jones' vocals that are the whole song.  One cannot train oneself to sing like Jones does--it is a gift from the Music Gods and I can goddamn guarantee you they pat themselves on the back every day for the abilities Ms. Jones has. Her vocals capture the heartache, the sorrow, and the confusion of her decision about as perfectly as any emotion has ever been captured in any song (only slight hyperbole).  I discovered it on VH-1 back in the day when television music channels were still pretending to care about music, and it was--and remains to this day--a breath of fresh air every time I hear it.

Lyric Sheet:  "When I saw the break of day/I wished that I could fly away/Instead kneeling in the sand/Catching teardrops in my hand..."

Enjoy:

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emaycee