I'm generally pretty content with my singleness. Dating is a drag, and inventing reasons to meet new people oozes desperation, and I've got a dog, so, you know. Normally I'm pretty okay with it. You know what makes me feel lonely, though? Grapefruit. Right now the grapefruits I'm getting from my fruit stand are, without hyperbole, some of the best, sweetest fruit I've ever had in my life, and I've been buying them in bushels. I usually have a couple a day. But it's the first one that gets me. Rolling out of bed and into the kitchen to halve a grapefruit for breakfast? It's such a two-person thing. I can certainly eat both halves, happily, that's not the point. When sectioning a grapefruit, you feel like you should be sectioning one half for yourself, one for someone else, bringing it back to bed before they get up. Bringing someone sweet grapefruit in bed is nice. I dunno. Maybe it's just that spring is in the air.

And of course soul music vibrates just the right heartstrings when you're feeling like Mr. Pitiful. Here's some soul tunes I've been digging heavily these past few weeks. The Aaron Neville tune especially.

Aaron Neville - Wrong Number (I am Sorry, Goodbye)

Bill Withers - Hope She'll Be Happier (live)

Eddie Holman - Four Walls

Irma Thomas - Gone (live)

Jimmy Holiday - The Turning Point

April Young - Steady Boyfriend

Actually, "Steady Boyfriend" just put me in a pretty terrific mood. Thanks, music!

Spent most of today doing my weekly (almost daily at this point) trawl through the good music blogs. Nothing much caught my ear until I heard this song:

Amy Winehouse - Rehab

Which, okay wow. Am I the last person to hear about this chick?

I generally can't be bothered to give a flying fuck about what's going on in soul/R&B, since almost all of it is garbage after, oh, 1980 or so. (Man, whatever happened to black music?) But this song hit me just the right way (and not just because of my St. Jerome's bender last night), so it figures its by a 23 year old white Jewish Brit.

She's like what if Macy Gray was actually good. And she also wins points with me for being a hot mess in the British tabloids, doing things like heckling Bono ("Shut up! I don't give a fuck!") at awards ceremonies.

Okay, she does over-embellish the melody sometimes, but pretty much everyone oversings like that nowadays, so I can let it slide. To her credit, she shows a little more restraint than her contemporaries.


Amy Winehouse "Rehab" live at the Brit Awards

more YouTube links from some acoustic rehearsals or radio station performance or something:
Rehab (I particularly like this version)
You Know I'm No Good
Love is a Losing Game