Remarks:
This song came out in Britain and Europe in 2012 but did not chart. She is American. Her roots are gospel, R&B and soul. This song is so DORFtastic that she has sung for both NPR and Starbucks. I like the Starbucks version best.
Lyrics:
Won’t do right, and he can’t be told
No, He can’t be told,
No, He can’t be told
Won’t do right, and he can’t be told
No, He can’t be told,
No, He can’t be told
Spent his whole life running
Trying to meet a mark
Seems like every moment
Put him back at the start
See how he livin’
See where he’s bound
Same destination
6 feet in the ground
Eagle bird got his eye on you
got his eye on you
got his eye on you
Eagle bird got his eye on you
everything you do
got his eye on you
Ain’t tryin’ to be nobody
But my fine sweet self
Honey, if I give you everything
then, I’ll have nothing left
If I’ve gotta break the law
To be free from your chains
I’ll plead self-defense
when that judge calls my name
Rooster crowed in the dead of night
Knew it wasn’t right
to crow before daylight
@ Abagond This was is not only beautiful but very talented. I discovered her a few years ago and she blew me away! I think she’s very under rated and needs to get more airtime. I recently met actress Jessica Alba a few weeks ago,I was not impressed. I would much rather have met someone like Valerie. She also seems very down to earth. A true gem. 🙂
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Definitely…. A true gem!!! Shame she didn’t make it through the charts which would have given her the much needed exposure…. Great song and amazing talent – much like Asa and Cee Cee Michaela to name but a few…
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Valerie June is an amazing artist. I discovered her on the alternative radio station I listen too. You should hear “Working Woman Blues” and “Pushing Against A Stone.” She is talented.
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Typo ^^^^ *to*
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Saw her in concert recently. My favs for now are The Hour & Somebody to Love.
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Her dreads are super mature – wow!
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@ Abagond
What is giving it the dorf quality, in your opinion?
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I noticed i mentioned her in my comment on the dorf thread. i heard her music on the sister station of the NPR radio channel. Her music is not played on mainstream radio stations. I am glad i found that station.
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This is the first time I’ve heard of this singer. She has a sound, and can play.
Beautiful woman, too.
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This youtube video is blocked in my current location.
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@ Jefe
I am not surprised. That seems to be especially true for Vevo videos.
@ Legion
What makes her dorf is that she is playing in a style that is NOT currently popular among Black Americans. She is playing in a bluesy style that makes her sound retro (the R in DORF). Her performances for NPR and Starbucks that I heard were done with only an acoustic guitar, which makes her sound even more retro and therefore even more dorf (though in her case they might have done that simply because she sounds better live and unprocessed).
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“DORFtastic” — I love it. This joint is in heavy rotation on The Current. By definition, that makes it “DORFtastic”, I think.
http://www.thecurrent.org
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she is playing in a style that is NOT currently popular among Black Americans.
I’m not American, as you know. However, popularity is often fueled by bias, emotion and ideology/fashion. I respond with suspicion to anything that is popular. At least some number of those who are currently promoting some flavour of the moment are, in fact stupid people, which reminded me of an anecdote:
Black Americans are not a monolith, they don’t all like the same thing. A claim that “black americans like X” sounds like a construct to me. When I was a teen the media would say the same things, “teens like x”. I don’t know who they were talking about. “Teens” were not all the same either, some of us liked Roxy Music, Jimi Hendrix, Whitney Houston, Iron Maiden, Ratt, etc. “Teens” were, in fact, people and not a type of inferior adult.
Abagond you must mean a certain majority percentage of a certain black american demographic. Which demographic?
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@ Legion
What Black Americans actually like does not matter. They like all kinds of things. Even Valerie June (scroll up). What matters is what Whites THINK they like. Whites have this strange hang-up about contemporary working-class Black American culture – they are both fascinated and repelled, think it is cool, yet “ghetto”, think it is “authentic” yet relentlessly bastardize it. It goes back to the minstrel shows, at least. This is the thing that dorf avoids.
Valerie June has separated herself from that whole mess, so she is “safe”, acceptably black.
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@ Abagond, aha! I was wondering about that.
Especially when you said, in a separate sentence in the intro text:
…She is American.
!
I suppose because she is playing in a supposedly atypical style, she could be mistaken for a Quirky British artist or something because of those cultural mis-perceptions.
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Typo: I meant blockquotes for “She is American”.
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eh. kinda like ‘smokestack lightning’
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I am now super in love with her whole album. Thank you.
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Also, I’d love to hear your thoughts on Fishbone and Angelo Moore / Dr. Madd Vibe….. I’d love to see a piece on them / him:) Just thrown it out there!
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*throwin
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