Morgan James - Acoustic Cover Songs, Volume 1, 2014-2015

Here's a new artist for this blog, Morgan James. She's new in the sense that I've never posted any music from her before. But she's also new in that I only discovered her recently. I was searching for something on YouTube when I got a suggestion to listen to her performance of the Beatles' "White Album." She sang and played the entire thing straight through (including "Revolution 9") and did a great job of it. But I was even more impressed with her cover of "Dream On" by Aerosmith. You really should check out this YouTube video of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq4KA0mUnC8

It has 20 millions views and counting, and deservedly so. What a voice!

So I started checking out more of her stuff. Yes, she has the face of a fashion model, and she's used that to her advantage getting some work as an actress. But she's much more than just another pretty voice. She trained at Julliard, the top music school in the country, and has sung in many Broadway shows and even operas. She's a talented songwriter too, and has been releasing albums of original material since 2014. I'm surprised she isn't a lot more famous. She's probably best known for her occasional role in Postmodern Jukebox, where famous modern songs are performed in old-fashioned musical styles.

Anyway, what interests me most about James is that she does a LOT of cover versions performed in just an acoustic format. Her long-time husband Doug Wamble is an excellent guitar player. The two of them have been posting acoustic covers since 2014, and probably have done over 200 by now. I plan on posting all of them, one album of about 45 minutes of music at a time. Here's the first one.

One thing I like about James' covers is that she has somewhat different musical tastes than I do. In particular, I've noticed she's more into popular songs from the past couple of decades. That's great, because my main beef with most of those songs is the bad production. When they're stripped down and sung by James, they're often revealed to be very good songs. She's also more into vocal jazz than I am, so I've been able to discover some new songs of that type through her as well.

Some of the songs have some drums on them, but are minimalistic enough for me to still consider them acoustic. She has occasionally done some covers in full band format. I plan on posting them separately eventually. 

The songs are generally in the order they were posted on YouTube. I changed the order slightly though to start things off with a bang with her cover of Aretha Franklin's "Baby, I Love You."

Here are the original artists for each song:

01 Baby, I Love You - Aretha Franklin
02 I'm Not the Only One - Sam Smith
03 Fantasy - Genius of Love - Mariah Carey
04 Fooled Around and Fell in Love - Elvin Bishop
05 Ain't It Fun - Paramore
06 Dancing in the Dark - Bruce Springsteen
07 Come Together - Beatles
08 Sledgehammer - Peter Gabriel
09 Rather Be - Clean Bandit
10 What Christmas Means to Me - Stevie Wonder
11 Really Love - D'Angelo
12 Sugar Daddy - D'Angelo

And here's the usual song list:

01 Baby, I Love You (Morgan James)
02 I'm Not the Only One (Morgan James)
03 Fantasy - Genius of Love (Morgan James)
04 Fooled Around and Fell in Love (Morgan James)
05 Ain't It Fun (Morgan James)
06 Dancing in the Dark (Morgan James)
07 Come Together (Morgan James)
08 Sledgehammer (Morgan James)
09 Rather Be (Morgan James)
10 What Christmas Means to Me (Morgan James)
11 Really Love (Morgan James)
12 Sugar Daddy (Morgan James)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15266886/MorganJ_2014-2015_AcoustcCoverSongsVolume1_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from a 2014 visit to a radio station.