![\"MADELEINE-PEYROUX-Issue-No25\"](\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/MADELEINE-PEYROUX-Issue-No25.jpg\")
<\/h1>\n<\/h1>\nThe jazz-pop vocalist\u2019s new collection reimagines a country classic<\/b><\/p>\n
For many artists, a covers album often becomes a mishmash of haphazardly chosen songs that suit the singer\u2019s voice better than they suit each other. But on The Blue Room<\/i>, jazz singer Madeleine Peyroux not only interprets the work of other artists, she also pays tribute to one, Ray Charles, and his pioneering album Modern Sounds in Country\u00a0<\/i> and Western Music<\/i>.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething\u2019s tying the songs together on this record because we started off with a theme, which I had never done before,\u201d says Peyroux, 40. \u201cThe theme was to pay homage to Ray Charles\u2019 record, and boy what a theme.\u201d Modern Sounds<\/i> served as a jumping-off point for The Blue Room<\/i>\u2014half of the album\u2019s tracks are taken from the 1962 classic. Peyroux also tackles songs by Randy Newman, Leonard Cohen, Warren Zevon and Buddy Holly. Despite their eclectic backgrounds, the songs have all been cohesively reinterpreted as mellow jazz numbers accented with brushed drums and warm string arrangements.<\/p>\n
Peyroux sees The Blue Room<\/i> as a collaborative project. \u201cIt\u2019s an amalgam of [producer] Larry Klein\u2019s vision, Vince Mendoza\u2019s string arrangements, the studio musicians\u2019 ideas and the engineer\u2019s panoramic approach to the recording process. The goal is to have something that is lasting and classic on its own. It\u2019s not up to the vocalist to be the only thing that shines. Even in a situation where we\u2019re making vocals the focal point, it\u2019s the subtlety in the arrangements, playing and recording that makes these things seem simpler.\u201d<\/p>\n
Klein and Mendoza\u2019s ideas for the record helped Peyroux select songs that she thought fit the Modern Sounds<\/i>\u2019 theme. \u201cLarry was clear that he wanted to make that record with me, instead of making an homage record with tons of different artists. It made it even more personal,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the reasons I looked for songs that had been written since this record came out, to see if I could bring myself into the spirit of the title of this record, Modern Sounds.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n
Peyroux believes her involvement helps achieve that goal. \u201cAll these songs were written and sung by men, \u201c she says, \u201cso the fact that it\u2019s a female voice also makes it modern.\u201d Peyroux is also binding these songs together through a sense of American identity. \u201cOne of the things I ended up finding was this country-and-western\/blues\/American folk\u2014it\u2019s an identity, and there\u2019s a seamlessness that runs through these songs. An old American folk song usually has that loneliness and searching quality that you might not feel from folk songs of other countries.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013Amanda Farah<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MADELEINE PEYROUX The jazz-pop vocalist\u2019s new collection reimagines a country classic For many artists, a covers album often becomes a mishmash of haphazardly chosen songs that suit the singer\u2019s voice better than they suit each other. But on The Blue Room, jazz singer Madeleine Peyroux not only interprets the work of other artists, she also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[6164,6199,6202,6200,3263,10156,6201],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9308"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9308"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9310,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9308\/revisions\/9310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}