A still from the Lou Reed-directed video for Perfect Day by Susan Boyle
Our music writers pick the songs (and one video) you really ought to know about.
Be My Man Asa, from Beautiful Imperfection (import only, and on iTunes; available at youtube.com)
Bukola Elemide (who records as Asa) is a French-Nigerian singer with a strong emotional connection to Detroit circa 1965. Though this sinewy, rocking soul number has a vintage sound, there's something indefinable here that didn't exist before Asa sashayed in and found it.
Page Break Buke and Gass, from Riposte (Brassland, available at youtube.com)
Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez take their freaky instruments (six-string baritone ukulele and mutant bass guitar) on the road for this smash-and-grab video of a pounding piece of hemiola-ridden art rock about emotional claustrophobia.
Instant Hit The Slits, from Cut (Island, available at youtube.com)
The Slits's lead singer Ari Up is dead, and Taylor Swift is the queen of the charts. If something about those facts seems painfully wrong to you, take a romp through this perennially fresh song from 1979. It's practically a manifesto for all the tough, playful women in music who came after, from Madonna to M.I.A. Added bonus: one of the sweetest diminished sevenths in all popular music.
The Death of Saint Narcissus From Divine Musick: The Late Works for Tenor and Harp (ATMA Classique; sample streaming at atmaclassique.com
Benjamin Britten set T.S. Eliot's early erotic poem (a bit of which appears in The Waste Land) late in life, a year after finishing Death in Venice, another work about a beautiful male and the shadow of death. Canadian tenor Lawrence Wiliford and harpist Jennifer Swartz give a richly perfumed account of Britten's sly rendering.
Perfect Day Susan Boyle, from The Gift (forthcoming from Sony; video streaming at nymag.com)
Try to keep your jaw from falling open over this one. After appearing to bar Boyle from singing his peaceful/menacing 1972 tune on TV, Lou Reed agreed to make a misty video of her worshipfully inert performance. As the song says, "You're going to reap just what you sow."