Looking Back

There I was yesterday, pontificating how ‘looking back’ at old music didn’t always meet my approval. Today, a volte face, as I breezed through the list of albums on my MP3 player and felt the most incredible craving to play Miss America, the 1988 (I had to look that up) folk?, country?, jazz? album by the queen of the where-are-they-nows, Mary Margaret O’Hara. It really a fabulous record, full of immense vocal performances the like of which I’ve never encountered since or had met before. O’Hara’s lyrics are heartfelt, her delivery remains almost fractured and unusually phrased throughout. The songs stray from the traditional verse-chorus-verse but there is a refreshing structure to be discovered. After twelve listens it all makes perfect sense. I believe it was one of the first CDs I ever bought. Nothing like it exists in my record collection to this day.