16. Billie Holiday - Lady in Satin (1958)

1. I'm a Fool to Want You*

2. Heaven's Sake

3. You Don't Know What Love Is

4. I Get Along Without You Very Well*

5. For All We Know

6. Violets for Your Furs

7. You've Changed

8. It's Easy to Remember

9. But Beautiful

10. Glad to be Unhapopy

11. I'll Be Around

12. The End of a Love Affair*

A

I fully expected to hate this album. The first time I heard it, back when I first attempted this project some ten years ago, I found it unlistenable. So I was prepared to declare this the worst kind of emotional pornography, an exploitative document of a woman on the edge of death. But as it turns out, it's a lot more than that. In fact it's actually quite good.

Holiday's drug problems were famous by the time this was recorded. The singer would die of cirrhosis of the liver a year after Lady in Satin's release. And the obsession with excess and addiction that runs through most popular music clouds this album. It's very difficult to separate the genuine musical qualities from the frission created by knowing about Holiday's personal life. Is "The End of a Love Affair" a beautiful reflection on personal foibles sinking a relationship, or is the line "So I drink a little much, and I smoke a little much" a dark reflection by Holiday on her own excesses? Or is it both?

Purely musically, this is a pretty great album. Holiday sounds ten thousand years old, and when that's embedded in the incredibly lush string-and-choir arrangements of the songs it creates a wondewrful contrast. When I first heard this album I thought Holiday was unlistenable, but I've both lived a lot more and heard a lot more music since then and now I appreciate her antediluvian rasp. At times she sounds like Etta James, if Etta James smoked three packets of smokes and downed a bottle of whiskey before recording "At Last".

I don't really know how to approach this album. It's a heart-breaking document of the price of excess, and at the same time it draws power from that to become a genuinely beautiful album. As Holiday herself sings, "I'm so unhappy, but oh so glad".