#loungecore

if u like The Cardigans and havent heard this album. please listen to it its so so so good. One of my all time favorites

The Easy Project ~ 20 Loungecore Favourites . . #vinyl #vinyllife #instavinyl #records #LP #pdxdjs #pdx #portland #nowplaying #jazz #mod #soul #lounge #exotica #1960s #1970s #groove #pdxdj #loungecore #easyproject #sequelrecords @instavinyl https://www.instagram.com/p/B8ovM8chcXU/?igshid=eeb4p3dbgrwe

Adieu to the divine Françoise Hardy (17 January 1944 – 11 June 2024). Her death aged 80 is deeply saddening but not unexpected (Hardy had been living with cancer for many years). Where to start with this Parisian pop goddess, French national treasure, inspired musician, impossibly chic style icon (dressed by Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and Paco Rabanne and photographed by likes of Richard Avedon and David Bailey) and occasional model and actress? On a superficial level, with her moody, inscrutable penchant for glancing downwards through a sweep of long bangs and false eyelashes, Hardy was a French kissin’ cousin to contemporaries like Marianne Faithfull and Chelsea Girls-period Nico. Most importantly, her music is timelessly devastating. Think of the swirling, lush drama and crescendos of 1960s Dusty Springfield or Phil Spector productions, but with a Gallic twist and with Hardy’s beguiling, coolly poised but sensual and emotive murmurs, sighs and whispers at the eye of the storm. And from her 1962 debut onward, she wrote her own songs when it was far from the norm for pop singers, let alone female ones. No wonder Gen X-ers embraced her as an adored cult figure during the 1990s “loungecore” era. My favourite songs by Hardy (and her quality control was exceptional) would have to include “Je n’attends plus personne” (with its unexpectedly angry snarling fuzzed-out guitar), “Et Même” (with its “handclaps-of-doom” intro before the piano kicks in – trust me, that description makes sense when you listen to it!), “C’est le passe”, “Tu peux bien”, “Je t’aime”, “Voilà” and her collaborations with Serge Gainsbourg (“Comment te Dire Adieu” and “L’Anamour”). What an artist, what a woman.

Grab your teasing comb and slather on the black liquid eyeliner! Sublime raspy-voiced singer-songwriter, loungecore icon and Goddess of Country Exotica (and eternal hair hopper / false eyelash role model) Bobbie Gentry (née Roberta Lee Streeter on 27 July 1942) turns 83 today. (At least I assume she does: some sources list 1944 as her birth year). “Bobbie Gentry was never a Country artist,” Tyler Mahan Coe provocatively asserts on his astute podcast Cocaine & Rhinestones. “And I’m not doing that whole “authenticity” thing. I don’t believe she set out to make Country music. Was her music Southern? Absolutely, yes. But so was Gone with the Wind. So was everything that came out of Stax Records in Memphis … this is NOT Country music. This is pop music about Country music. But Bobbie’s music had a huge impact on Country music.” Of her later more baroque records when Gentry received more creative autonomy and bigger budgets, Coe modifies that to “more like what a Broadway musical about Country music would sound like.” Gentry is also, of course, one of the great enigmas of modern times: she withdrew from public life over four decades ago and her present-day existence is shrouded in mystery. From Wikipedia: “the last time Gentry appeared in public was when she attended the Academy of Country Music Awards on 30 April 1982. She was 39 years old. Since that time, she has not recorded, performed, or been interviewed.” My favourite Bobbie Gentry song will always be “Mississippi Delta”, followed by “Fancy” and her dreamy duets with Glen Campbell. Her cover of Burt Bacharach’s “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” is definitive. And I shuddered with pleasure when the TV show Poker Face recently featured Gentry’s “Seasons Come, Seasons Go” on the soundtrack.

Born on this day 105 years ago: incomparably sultry torch singer Peggy Lee (Norma Deloris Egstrom, 26 May 1920 - 21 January 2002). As her biographer James Gavin writes in the essential Is That All There Is? The Strange Life of Peggy Lee (2015), the jazz enchantress conveyed maximum emotional (and erotic) impact with little more than a languid murmur: "a tough purr that kicked open the bedroom door." “Those who saw her at New York’s Basin Street East or the Copacabana in the 60s know firsthand the Peggy Lee of legend: a seductive blonde who controlled the stage like a puppeteer,” Gavin continues. “Her throaty voice floated on a wisp of breath yet could drive a whole orchestra. Characters materialized one by one - a barroom vamp on the make, an indomitable housewife, a faded woman exposing her loneliness.” You can hear Lee’s bewitching artistry on  definitive musical statements like the finger-snapping “Fever”, the swirling Latin exotica of “Lover” (which – as Gavin writes - Lee attacked “like a panther in heat”), “Johnny Guitar”, “I’m a Woman” (“a feminist anthem with a stripper beat”), “Black Coffee” and the supremely world-weary “Is That All There Is?” (originally intended for Marlene Dietrich). I especially love the eerie “The Case of MJ” from her 1975 album Mirrors, in which Lee casts herself as an institutionalized mentally ill woman, alternating between numb childlike compliance (“Mary Jane's been a good girl today / She ate all her peas / She said, "thank you" and "please"”) and stabs at defiance (“Mary Jane tried to run away / Mary Jane has been naughty today …”). Pictured: Peter Hujar’s portrait of the diva in 1974.

Born on this day: musical genius, ultimate dissipated lounge lizard and French pop’s Marquis de Sade, Serge Gainsbourg (né Lucien Ginsburg, 2 April 1928 – 2 March 1991). I pretty much love this man’s entire oeuvre, but especially his sublime early 1960s “Latin exotica” phase like “L'eau à la bouche” and “Les amours perdues.” Guzzle some vin rouge and chain-smoke Gitanes in Gainsbourg’s memory!

Happy 84th birthday to ne plus ultra of go-go booted, white lip-sticked, and bouffant-maned 1960s sex kittens, sublime pop goddess Miss Nancy Sinatra (born 8 June 1940). Her brash, sexy “country exotica” musical collaborations with maverick visionary Lee Hazlewood are timelessly beguiling. In addition to the obvious classics (“These Boots are Made for Walkin’”, “Sugar Town”, “Summer Wine,” “Jackson”, “Some Velvet Morning”), off the top of my head, my favourite Nancy tunes would include “Lightning’s Girl”, “Friday’s Child”, “You Only Live Twice” (the best Bond theme – with apologies to Dame Shirley Bassey!) and the hushed, sensual post-coital bossa nova-tinged interpretation of “Tired of Waiting” by The Kinks. And if you follow outspoken present-day Sinatra on social media, you’ll know that the uncompromising life-long staunch Democrat is a right-on sister politically, too.

File Under Sacred Festive Music! Quoted above: biographer nonpareil James Gavin reflecting on the 1966 album Merry from Lena by the personification of Black glamour (and the chanteuse defined by André Leon Talley as a “mahogany goddess”) in his 2010 book Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne. Christmas standards rarely sounded more elegant. Merry from Lena is easy to find and stream online in the usual places – and some tracks from it are featured in my own epic Christmas playlist here!