I don’t mean to question her sincerity (well, maybe a little … ), but it’s always struck me as particularly devious that she would choose Etta James as her idol. When the outpouring of “celebrity grief” started up on Friday afternoon, Beyoncé, of course, was among the first to chime in. It’s impossible not to compare the two: Beyoncé played Etta James in 2008’s Cadillac Records and stole her song at the presidential election. Why not let Etta sing her own song at the inauguration? It felt as if we had woken from a dream to find that all our favorite singers had been replaced by pretty robots who made us angry, sure, but it also made us want to buy Neutrogena soap and Pepsi Max. They had just trotted out Aretha and her hat. When Beyoncé sang “At Last” at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration, I researched ways to take back my vote. We more hate what Beyoncé represents: the idea that blandness, marketing, a deliberate lack of personality (for Beyoncé apologists who are getting riled up right now, ask yourselves what, really, do you know about your Queen?), and well-timed, impromptu dance moments in Targets can stand in for generations of soul, jazz, and R&B music. Readers of DivaWatch will hopefully realize that the Committee has nothing against Beyoncé personally. She also served as a foil for everything we hated about the current music landscape, namely Beyoncé. She was everything we felt an American singer should be: a rude, sexy, angry, conflicted woman who, when she sang, could make you forget all about your own bullshit. In last week’s DivaWatch 2012, I mentioned that the Diva Committee operated under two pillars of faith. (Who, in this age of Auto-Tuned singing robots, would be heir to her throne?) Perhaps, more than anything else, that’s the true mark of genius: Even when you’re dead and all your records have been relegated to nostalgia’s vaults, your music can still inspire hope for a better future. It’s incorrect to say that James, in this respect, was ahead of her time. It was a perfect eulogy, the totality of Etta James: the blonde hair, the cat-eye makeup, the deep voice, the wild hand motions, the stomping onstage, and the theatrics that provided a template for a more candid womanhood. She was ribald and raunchy and dignified, classy and strong and vulnerable all at the same time, which is what us as women really relate to.” Following the announcement of James’ death this past Friday, her longtime friend Bonnie Raitt said, “ was able to dig so deep in kind of such a raw and unguarded place when she sang, and that’s the power of gospel and blues and rhythm and blues … I think that’s what appealed to people, aside from the fact that her personality on and off the stage was so huge and irrepressible. But the measure of a great soul singer comes from her ability to present herself as the better version of ourselves, and, in turn, invite the listener into a better sort of drama. Only the boldest of us who have heard “I Would Rather Go Blind” or “All I Could Do Was Cry” could place our little dramas at the center of those songs. There is no space in an Etta James song the story, its heroes, and its villains are fully occupied by Etta James. Hers was a dynamic, almost counterintuitive genius the most flamboyant jazz singer of her generation was also the most nuanced.
With Etta James, every shocking grunt, every growl, every overflowing scream, and every sweet, almost sarcastically honeyed swing of low notes brought you deeper into those living rooms with cigarette ashes and empty glasses, closer to an intimidating, angry, yet thoroughly candid woman who only sang songs about herself. They, instead, exist as evidence of the potential of the human voice.
Those high notes, while impressive, don’t tell you much about Mariah’s E-mo-tions or her fantasies. When Mariah Carey plugs her finger into her ear, closes her eyes, and goes on a run of super-high notes, the performance turns into a feat of human strength. The technical never trumped the demands of the moment she knew, perhaps better than any other soul singer of her generation, when the song needed to be pushed out past its usual barriers and when it just needed to be sung. Etta James never sang an unwarranted note.