Michelle Chamuel

[Tom22]

Hi Merc.. just wanted to let you know you're being read : )

I enjoy Michele and certainly respect her talent.

Her Ted video (which I'll insert here with a different link than you gave for posterity sake)



... really approached some things I've been knawing at on these pop music sites.

I really think all covers of all songs do .. or at least can... bring some "world view" of the singers ... and I mean that in a useful way..

I liked how she defined pop music as art (why would we have it if not? listen.. or some similar quip) and musing on how art is about touching people and it is the message within a delivery of a song that.. well that Delivers to the state of mind/soul of the listener,

Its not just the voice which is only the tool not the product (although a shotty tool creates shotty products too).

I liked her references and theories about how the history of a family is present in every day psyche's and how the phsyche of the parents in part forms their children they raise to some extent too.

Her conviction that the role of a musician is to speak to people and that popularity is based upon pertinence of a message needed by the audience was spot on I think.

Adolescents with their body's changing and beginning to have adult responsibilities put on them and pulled so many ways socially and academically must need music that makes a complex world simple... which might be jarringly sappy to older people who in varrying degrees want bigger issues and more dexterity or beauty or all sorts of different things different more adult people would hope for. I suppose some adults want the world reduced to a few simple things that tend to numb rather than open minds....a night on the town dancing is more about forgetting the world and just living physically so any music that inspires thought might be poor art in fufilling its purpose of lifting worry's temporarily from an audience.

I heard Michelle say something like that in her own words in ways that probably have given me a different understanding that I cannot yet put into words.

Anyway....

I liked her thoughts... or at least how she attempted to put to words and example aspects of music and psyche that escape words .....at least escape words that don't mean drastically different things to different people.

I think it also drives home a message that different people NEED different messages from music and that quality might not translate from person to person despite a talent. I'm not sure Michele speaks to me.. I'd say she doesn't actually.. but I do HEAR a consistency of approach to make me really understand how she'd be reaching people with that wonderful tool and trained use of it that she does her expression with.