One of my enthusiasms
They used to say in ancient times that the most beautiful women in the known world came from Circassia, in the north Caucasus. Looking at Katie Mellua - born in Georgia, just south of Circassia - it is easy to know what they meant. Small, lean, trim like an arrow, altogether feminine with an enormous head of rich curly black hair, regular features and huge expressive eyes, she is quite simply the most beautiful woman in pop. She blows the Britneys and the Gwens and the Christinas away without even trying, and one would have to go back to Marianne Faithfull and Kim Carnes to find popular singers carrying so much pure native and cultivated loveliness about their persons. And this is not just a matter of appearance, of externals; it is not just that Katie is beautiful, but that her whole artistry can be summed up as an instinct for beauty. Her tone is high and incredibly pure, like a child's, and amazingly affecting. Some singers with similar gifts have, in my view, been hurt by cultivating beauty of tone for its own sake; two names I think of in this context are Paul Robeson and Joan Baez - and they have in common with Katie that they also were physically very attractive. Robeson's Ol' Man River is legendary, but as far as I am concerned, the interpretation of someone like Willard White, with more edges left deliberately rough and a corresponding sense of reality and tragedy, is more affecting. But though Katie seems incapable to produce a sound that is not beautiful, that does not restrict her. She makes her beautiful tone a faithful vehicle for emotion and passion, and their impact is multiplied rather than diminished by the native gentleness and loveliness of it - something that suggests a touching openness to experience, a vulnerability, almost an innocence, that make all her songs emotional and affecting experiences. She is no less good in classics like "Too much love will kill you" or "Blowin' in the wind" as in her own repertoire, and she is one of those artists who make me feel that, thank God, there are even now and here people producing good music for its own sake rather than robotic dance beats and semi-porn with no context.