4. Norah Jones
If there’s ever a memorial for me, I want ‘The Long Day Is Over’ to be played. When I first heard Norah Jones, I couldn’t stop playing the opening track, called ‘Don’t Know Why’. What fascinated me was the gentleness of her voice, the breathiness and the chords in this very strange song where she sings “I left you at the house of fun, don’t know why I didn’t come”. The person who wrote the song, I think it’s a man, wrote several other songs, he must be a millionaire now because they’re so unusual.
It’s the only record that I would listen to enthusiastically all the way through and that is extremely rare. Nearly always there’s some song that I just want to spool past and it’s probably the same with my songs that somebody is going to want to spool past. Norah Jones has a consistency in the way she sings and none of her ensuing albums equal this one. My partner and I would listen over and over and over to it, on long, long journeys.
