Elliot Smith - Angeles

These are becoming difficult to come up with as there are so many good songs that deserve to exist in this space. It would also be easy to get stuck in a rut. I could easily post Jeff Buckley songs for the next couple months. I also don't need to post music everyone has heard. This isn't a place to promote the classics, but introduce you to new material. Even new older material.

I decided to challenge myself today. Discover a song I've never listened to. Thus I chose an Elliot Smith song. I find direct baritone singers are harder for me to comprehend. It's much easier for an artist with incredible vocal range to pull their heart out. With a baritone, it can be tricky. You need to feel as if you are the artist and what sort of mindset it would take to convey the melody and feeling of the lyrics.

Somewhere along the line things went bad for Elliot. He was a bit of a rock golden child. He had been nominated for an Oscar for his song 'Miss Misery' that appeared on the Good Will Hunting soundtrack. He suffered from depression, drug addiction, alcoholism. His darkness comes across in his song-writing. He's a bit like a lower strung Cobain with more talent. If that makes sense. Elliot died from 2 stab wounds to the chest. It's left to speculation if it's homicide or suicide. He was having a fight with his girlfriend and while in the shower she said she heard a scream and found him with a knife in his chest. She pulled it out and he collapsed and later died. There was a Post-It note found with the writing 'I'm sorry'.