ADDICTED TO AUDRA MAE

Worse than an earworm, Audra Mae’s version of What’s Her Name Today wakes me from my sleep. I play it on repeat. I play Elvis Costello’s version, then Audra’s back to back.

Elvis Costello wrote this masterpiece with Burt Bacharach for their album Painted From Memory. The sophistication of Bacharach’s music with the complex inner dialogue of Elvis’s lyrics elevates this song, and the rest of the collaboration to what I believe to be the best of both Bacharach and Costello.

What’s Her Name Today?

Audra Mae is the 39 year old great-great-niece of Judy Garland, and a great granddaughter of Garland's sister Jimmie. Michelle thinks she looks like a missing Judd sister. Either way, she is looking great in her blues genes.

What makes a great singer? Most people would include Judy Garland in their pantheon of great singers. I would also include Liza Minnelli, Judy’s daughter. My favourite song by Liza with a Z is her collaboration with The Pet Shop Boys on Stephen Sondheim’s Losing My Mind.

From there, I went on to Judy singing Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home, having falling in love with this song when I Leon Bibb sing it at the David Y.H. Lui theatre in the late 70’s.

Audra Mae is easily a contemporary of both Liza and Judy. She is also a great songwriter in her own right.

What's her name today?

What's her name today?

She could be anyone

I might have known you'd leave her crying

What's her name again?

You should be ashamed

How could you treat her so unspeakably?

Or did you think she was a different girl?

For as the radio played in the bedroom wall

What was that name you called her?

Was she the one who took away your pride

And your reason?

Oh, why did you decide that

You'd punish any girl you meet

To try and make that feeling go away?

What's her name today?

What's her name today?

Is her hair hanging down?

Or maybe it's fixed with a ribbon

Are her eyes still blue?

Should she trust in you?

Because it's a lonely world

She wants to believe for a while in all the things you say

But as the radio played in the bedroom wall

What was that name you called her?

Isn't her smile reminiscent of someone else?

Well, is it or isn't it?

Oh, why did you decide that

You'd punish any girl you meet

To try and make that feeling go away?

What's her name today?

Is she going to stay

So you can ruin her?

And soon she'll be twisted in chiffon

Dress her like a doll

String her like a pearl

She hears peals of bells, but it's hard to tell

Now that she's hung up like a chandelier

What's her name?

What's her name?

What's her name today?

Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach

These lyrics haunt me. Sung by a woman, and not just any woman, but Audra Mae gives the lyrics even more relevance and insight. Much more than a torch song, this song is a complex dissection of a man’s character. In particular, the lyric , “But as the radio played in the bedroom wall”, recalling fir me the big White House we lived in White Rock. It had an intercom system in the bedroom and kitchen. That could also play the radio. Michelle’s Dad, Pat, would have it on the morning with CBC news. We moved out there to look after him as he was living with the last stages of cancer. His routine of radio, cigarettes, rum and coke. He strength even as he was dying, hiding out his hand one day, I shook his hand, and his handshake grip was not crushing, but there was a virility and emotional power to it. It was saying I may be dying bud, but I am not gone and don’t forget it. And also thank you, as he really appreciated us being there. some singers just sing the notes, others live in the song, the words becoming their words, their story, their song. That is what I hear when I listen to Audra Mae.

Here is Audra singing Somewhere Over The Rainbow. She owns it. After that is her singing with Avicii. Damn, that girl can sing.