9. Alabama ShakesSound & Color
Well Brittney Howard is one of the heirs of this trajectory, the blues greats. If you listen to ‘I Don’t Want to Fight No More’, that is a study! If I was teaching performing voice and recording this would be a study for the class. She starts out with this kind of snarly scream and you really believe her. The way she talks about how hard she works just keeping the water and power turned on, then she is like “I am going to work myself to death”, it is a flawless delivery and performance.
You can see her life, or the life of the character about which she is singing about. This hard-working southern woman who is the one out there, working a job. Such a strong woman, she is the breadwinner, she is the worker and she is frustrated because she is saying “I do not want to fight no more”. And then the vocals end with her singing it over and over again like a mantra where you can hear the exhaustion.
