Tucker and Neil say I can blog about whatever I want, and I want to blog about the new RJD2/Kenna single. I got it off RJD2’s site the other day after a friend mentioned going to one of his shows, and it’s all I’ve listened to since. (Listen to it here.) If you’re a blogger — and you’re reading this, so chances are good that you are — just put this song on repeat and that’s all you need. If you’re me, anyway. Which you might be.
Kenna’s an interesting guy. He’s an amazingly talented singer and songwriter whose songs saunter into your brain, sit down on your brain’s couch, and put their feet up on your brain’s coffee table. He should be famous, and I can’t understand why he’s not.
I remember when his first album, New Sacred Cow, leaked online back in 2002 or so. It kept getting delayed by the record company even though there was huge buzz around the guy. It’s wrong to download music illegally and I’ve never ever done it, but a very bad person did so and forced me to listen to that album. It was fantastic. And uncategorizable, which is most likely why Kenna isn’t famous. There’s no section on iTunes for Electronic Music with Soulful Vocals That Somehow Sounds Familiar Yet Entirely New and This Stuff Should Be All Over the Radio and Please Let Everyone Even Remotely Affiliated with American Idol Be Lowered into an Industrial Shredder. For brevity’s sake, they could take out everything after “Entirely New,” but I think it’s really important.
Malcolm Gladwell actually has a whole chapter in his book Blink that analyzes Kenna’s career and why the music industry embraced him but the public hasn’t. So far, anyway. I don’t even know if it’s considered cool to talk about Gladwell, but he has some really interesting ideas about how the human brain makes decisions and this is boring so I’ll stop.
You should listen to Kenna. Start here.
P.S. Thanks, Laura! I think this post actually counts towards my job.