My musical tastes have always tended towards artists whose lyrics speak the contents of my heart. They come and go and change over the years, but one man has been a constant presence in my soul, iPod, and journal entries since I first heard his voice. His name is Jamie Cullum, and I grew to love him during the summer of 2004 when my place of employment, Barnes & Noble, played his album Twentysomething around the clock for an entire month.
From a journal entry dated 08/17/2004:
My "Currently Playing" was on the air in B&N during the entire month of July, and I never tired of listening to it each day. Jamie Cullum is an amazing British singer and pianist -- kind of a cross between Billy Joel, Bowie and Harry Connick Jr. -- and he has an unbelievably sexy voice. Too bad he looks like he's ten.
A year passed before Jamie garnered enough attention in the United States to play any shows here, and I was fortunate to see him live at Irving Plaza on his first trip to New York.
From a journal entry dated 10/12/2005, which morphed into a concert review that still appears on Jamie's official website:
I saw Jamie live again a few months later and the mastery of his performing style remained just as impressive as when I first saw him. Between then and now, I always gravitated towards Jamie's lyrics to commemorate moments of upheaval, change, and comprehension in my life. I cut an unhealthy ex out of my life on New Year's Day on 2006 and quoted Jamie when I told my friends about it:I spent 2+ hours tonight standing ten feet away from Jamie Cullum the world-renowned British jazz pianist who has redefined the genre and never records a flop. He is 25 years old, looks like he's fifteen, acts like he's anywhere between five and fifty.
He crooned, he keeled, he growled and whispered and scatted and shrieked and moaned. Every note was perfect, every syllable was impeccably executed in that soulful, raspy, incredibly sexy voice that belongs only to him.
He tickled the piano keys with symphonic precision, only to bang on them with his fists a moment later. His hands would move slowly, gently, deliberately, then he'd stop and begin poking out rapid patterns of notes with two fingers. At one point he played the instrument with his feet and his forehead. Then he sat on the keyboard. Then he reached inside the lid and started plucking the strings. Then he stood on the lid and took a flying leap onto the stage.
The man can go from Harry Connick Jr. to Radiohead, from a rap to a disco tune, from straight jazz to Lerner and Loewe in two seconds flat without the slightest hesitation, which isn't as simple a feat as one would imagine.
"If there's one thing I must do, despite my greatest fear, I'm gonna say to you what I've felt all of these years next year."I turned to Jamie again on March 28th of 2006 to help me work through some romantic confusion:
"Who knows the answers? Who do you trust? I can't even separate love from lust."He even provided the soundtrack for my 20th birthday:
"Love ain't the answer, nor is work. The truth eludes me so much it hurts. But I'm still having fun and I guess that's the key. I'm a twentysomething and I'll keep being me.I had the privilege of seeing Jamie Cullum perform live for a third time last weekend. (Many thanks to Rutila!) His music has grown more pensive lately -- his new album contains songs about self-reliance and longing and reflection, which shows that Jamie and I seem to have matured along the same lines. However, though "If I Ruled The World" and "Gran Torino" touched me, it was an old song -- the first Jamie Cullum song I ever heard back when I was seventeen years old -- whose newfound relevance to my life left me dumbstruck. The Quote of the Day borrows from it, and it can be heard in full below.
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