Music Sung with Passion

Interesting topic. To be honest, I usually don't react much to Diana Krall music. I enjoy it, but I react like Schubert mentioned, like she's out of time with the band - and with me. To me, she's kind of a crooner, like Chantal Chamberlain, Norah Jones, Michael Buble. They sound to me like professionally produced singers singing other people's songs. Good background music but some sense of authenticity is missing. Kind of like the difference between a recital and a confession. I'm sure she has her moments, like the one you describe, but I don't follow her closely enough to catch those. I never thought of Dylan as a passionate singer, I thought of him more as a passionate poet singing. Kris Kristofferson also, but then I heard Kris Kristofferson sing the Ballad of Ira Hayes on a tribute to Johnny Cash and even though it was television, I felt way different than when Johnny Cash sang it. I felt the lament, the frustration and the pity of it all. There is scorn and condemnation when Kris sings it.

To me, there are singers/bands that elicit a powerful intellectual response, but not so much a powerful emotional response. Passion, to me, is in the latter category. The words and the music can be simple, even stupid, but the emotional response powerful. A lot of rock is like that. Pretty dumb lyrics, but very strong emotional pull - whatever the emotion.

Which leads me to think that artists are simply human. I'd imagine that some nights they are just going through the motions and other nights they are riding a wave of some sort and magic happens. Maybe how the crowd reacts charges them and the two feed off each other. Maybe each artist connects with different people.

I'm not sure if the artists that come to my mind as passionate are truly passionate or if they just sing/sung with abandon, or both, and I reacted in kind, but the ones that stand out in my memory are Sarah McLachlin, Etta James, Janis Joplin, Bruce Springsteen (when he was young), John Denver, Grace Slick, Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Elvis, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and I know this may sound weird coming from the rock realm, but Klaus Meine of the Scorpions, Mick Jagger, Steve Tyler, Eddie Vedder and Jon Bon Jovi all struck me as passionate within their genre. Maybe Louis Prima and Louis Armstrong is in that category too. Absolutely infectious performances that just don't come from people who aren't passionate about they do and that are truly having fun. An honorable mention would be Jerry Garcia, who I typically found somnolent, but when he was singing Ripple? Mercy. Ditto Whitney Houston's cover of I Will Always Love You. She tapped into something there.

Wow, how easily so many come to mind and many more will come to mind as the day goes on, so I guess I believe that most of them are passionate, and like most humans, sometimes they are going through the motions because they are tired, or bored or distracted by other things going on in their lives and other times, the planets line up and they are absolutely on fire.

I see passion within music from two perspectives
1) the performance
2) the music itself, instruments and/or vocals

Bruce Springsteen to me is very passionate in his performances. He seems to pour all his emotions and energy into his concerts

I recorded a concert on DVR - 2005 Neil Young - Prairie in the Wind. I've watched it several times. Neil Young is not frantic and energetic like Bruce but I recall a song Neil speaks about and performs which mentions loosing his father to dementia. To me there's so much passion baked into the lyrics of the song paying respect.

Funny, I agree with a lot of what everyone's saying. I find Klaus Meine and also Neil Young to sing most of the music that they perform very passionately. When Neil sings Unknown Legend, I feel his passion. (I absolutely love that song). Practically every song that Klaus sings with the Scorpions is sung passionately. A tune that comes to mind is Arizona.

I'm not a huge Krall fan. However there's something about her rendition of A Simple Twist of Fate that really did it for me.

The question seems strange. Is there any occupation where all that are involved in it do it with passion? I think that it is a most human quality that some bring passion to their work and some do not.

So not to put too fine a point on it, there are many musicians that do not bring passion to their work.

What is great about music however, and pretty much validates all artists, is that I might hear one thing, and you might hear another.

I hear tremendous passion in Dylan's version of "Simple Twist Of Fate" and Krall leaves me cold. I may be channeling seeing Dylan do it live, when it was still fresh and new, during the Rolling Thunder Review concert at the Garden, but so much of these things are our gut reaction to the song. Most of us aren't in the dressing room to hear that the audience are idiots or that they make the whole thing possible so we are projecting this perception of passion, rather than having some first hand knowledge of it.

I just received the MOFI 45rpm "Freewheelin'". "Simple Twist of Fate" to me, was the stand out track. My point being, get this copy and you'll find that Dylan himself sung it with the most passion!