With a Little Stank on It


People have been making a whole lot of noise about Joss Stone lately, and I’m just struggling to get a handle on it. She’s 18, British, white, and she sings with some heavy soul; these things added up make for a solid gimmick, if you ask me. “A pretty British girl who can sing like Sam Cooke? Sign her up!” It’s the kind of thing that even the most butter-fingered rock writer could get a handle on (e.g. a brother and sister who aren’t actually brother and sister, oh my!), and turn into decent copy. The thing is, though, the girl really can sing. She’s got all the vibrato, the pipes, the note-bending virtuosity that you could want, and it’s pretty damn impressive.

Something about it, though. Something about it just leaves me cold.

She reminds me of a high-school kid trying to pull off King Lear. Most high-school kids would butcher Lear, leave it on the stage in tatters for the acid-victim janitor to sweep up. Even the most brilliant high-school kid wouldn’t do much better. The best you could hope for would be a talented parrot, a mimic to sound off all the inflections of a Derek Jacoby or an Olivier. They could sound like the real thing, but after all the studied monologues and pregnant pauses, the only thing left would be wax-paper facsimile. They just don’t have the blistered palms that Lear requires--they’re little kids playing dress-up.

Did Billie Holiday have to be a junkie? Or Syd Barrett a synapse-fried burnout? Did Tina need Ike to blacken her eye?

You know who I like? That little tramp Aguilera. Now don’t get me wrong here--I’m not out to provoke angry letters from rightfully-indignant women. I call her a tramp because that’s her game in “Dirrty”, to push the right of women to do what they like, for tramps to be tramps unapologetically. I don’t deny her that right, or the terms she wants to play with. If she wants to get dirty, to exist as X-Tina, then I won’t pretend otherwise. It’s the people who insist on denying it that imply a shame there, not me. Roll in the dirt, snort it off Linda Perry’s ass if it makes you happy.

No, I really really do like her. Those ballads? Hot damn! And I hate ballads! When she lays it down, aside from all of the vocal hysterics, I believe her. There’s something just beneath the surface that makes it echo, some unresolved shriek that won’t sit quiet.

Because she’s got two of the qualities most crucial to an artist—fearlessness and pinpoint sensitivity to criticism—she makes a whole lot of heartbreak for herself. She puts herself out there as an intensely sexual being, says there’s nothing wrong with that, lives a personal life that lends credibility to what she sings about, and then seems absolutely destroyed when douchebag writers call her a tramp. I don’t even doubt that she’s genuine in her devastation.

I hear that same devastation in those ballads, and that’s what makes them work. It’s like she’s done this terrifying thing, got naked in a room full of cameras and lights, and then needed these ballads to convince herself that she’s not wrong, even when she’s being attacked by soccer moms and Billy O’Reilly.

“Beautiful” is self-affirmation, and so it can be seen as some cheesy Dr. Marvin Monroe shit, but at the same time it’s also an enormous, resounding “Fuck you”. I feel this way, I will act this way, I will sing about acting this way, and fuck you, because that is true. Fuck you, because I know I’m not wrong, I know I shouldn’t be ashamed. That’s pretty badass, I think.

Because there’s an important distinction to be made here: where Christina’s sexuality is real (and therefore her artistic stance valid), Britney seems a puritan dressed-up as a coquette. She really does have the same middle-American hangups as the soccer moms, and so her artistic sexuality is a farce, something she hates but deals with to stay in the spotlight. It’s her discomfort that makes things dirty, closer to (dare I say?) whoring herself out. Christina owns her sexuality, and her art is an extension of that; it’s stanky, but it’s pure.

Now I’m not saying that young Joss Stone should squeeze into chaps and shake her shit. Actually, I really hope she doesn’t. I just think she needs to get run over by a bus, or have a nervous breakdown and move to a hovel in Harlem, or get left at the altar by the guy from Maroon 5. Even a simple Vioxx addiction might do it.

I’ve got nothing against the girl, of course. She seems really sweet, and it’s for purely selfish reasons that I wish the plague upon her head. Because when she comes out the other side, desperate and bruised, she’ll put out a record that’ll make me cry. Because she does have that pure talent, but the cutesy stuff will be gone, as will that damn glossed-up perfection, and thank God for that.

Because I really can’t wait for that record, that stunning, battered, glorious piece of stank.