kyrie eleison

I can't sleep. And it's all thanks to Judee Sill.

For those who aren't familiar, Judee was a singer-songwriter from the early 1970s who wrote ethereally baroque, lushly layered, and religiously- and sexually-charged songs that simply don't fit into any music category, though she was initially grouped with Joni Mitchell et al. I won't get into too much bio stuff here, but suffice it to say that Judee burned very brightly for a very short period of time, before fading into obscurity and dying of a drug overdose at the decade's close. She was so reclusive by this point, that many of her friends didn't learn of her passing for a solid year. Her childhood was marred by family deaths and her own deliquency.

I discovered Judee's music randomly about three years ago, when her two albums were still unavailable on CD (a mistake which has since been rectified by Asylum Records). There's no way to describe how powerful Judee's music is, or how much it affects me...she's everything I aspire to be. She's someone I return to listening to several times a year, bringing somber thoughts and fantasies of what could have been had she lived. All the songs she could have written. But some people can't work past their lot in life...it's as if they're destined to have a few hours in the sunlight, like some anchor, before being forever plunged into the deep.

Her song "Lady-O" (which was covered by the Turtles) has got to be the most beautiful thing on record, and it's so stuck in my head right now that I can't sleep. Always one for a good old emotional purging, I recorded a cover version of my own tonight. As she's relatively obscure, I figured I'd post it so others might get turned on to her. See what you think. No sueing, please.

Lady-O.