We don’t do torch singers all that often any more. Fashions change and so do audiences, and often musicians will twist to fit the mood that we are in. The key to it all remains the voice, and the story it is telling. There is one artist who, for me, manages to combine the hip-hop and soul she’s renowned for with that torch singer sensibility; a sense of loss and longing. It is multiple Grammy award-winner Mary J Blige. Nobody on Earth aches like her.
My introduction to MJB came early: I remember dancing to Real Love at friends’ birthday parties before I was a teen, repeating lyrics about an elusive (and, for me, fictional) ideal love. A few years later, I choreographed routines to Mary Jane (All Night Long) and her cover of (You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman. No one made me feel like MJB did: full up and world-weary, but always hopeful. And no one looked like she did, either: black and blond and glamorous in a conspicuous way. Thrillingly, Mary looked like she spent money on her ensembles.
She’s been through a lot – depression, a now-kicked drink and drug addiction, abusive relationships – and she mined her pain for her art. “No one’s gonna make me hurt again,” she sang on the title track of her 2001 album No More Drama. Post-2016 divorce, she’s on album number 13, the slow burn Strength Of A Woman. And She sings about heartbreak like no one else; I’ve seen grown women break down and weep while listening to Not Gon’ Cry (a karaoke classic). But my favourite Mary is joyous, dancing and clapping on Just Fine, or bragging about her own legend on MJB Da MVP. Darkness needs light, after all.
