Kimbra

According to idolator.com, 22 year old New Zealand singer-songwriter-musician Kimbra (full name: Kimbra Lee Johnson) has snuck onto Entertainment Weekly‘s “30 Greatest Artists Right Now” list. She’s at 29th place. For a young artist who has just debuted her first album, Vows, making EW’s top 30 is an accomplishment. But Kimbra oozes talent. I first saw Kimbra (I was already aware of her music) on Jay Leno’s July 9, 2012 show performing “Settle Down”, the opening track from Vows. What a great performance! If that performance was on YouTube, I would embed it here. I haven’t found it on YouTube, but I did find a video of Kimbra performing “Settle Down” at the front yard of the Spotify House. She doesn’t have her band with her so she’s performing solo. She uses a looper at the front end of the song for background vocals and uses a tablet keyboard at the back end of the song for organ chords. The result is impressive.

The official “Settle Down” video is below. It’s the same song – sort of – but with a rather strange video.

I’ll end this blog post with the third track from Vows: "Plain Gold Ring" recorded live at Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne, Australia. As a commenter remarked, Kimbra “grabs the song with her hands and plays with it … it’s not dancing to the music, it’s dancing with the music.” I wholeheartedly agree; it’s something Kimbra does with all her music.