Saturday Video Fun: Jessica Andrews - Who I Am (2001)

For the past six months or so, I've been posting a fun song to Facebook every Saturday. I thought it might be nice to cross post it here.



Saturday video fun is often (but not always) a country song. Creative songwriting is alive and well in country music. There's a simple reason for this. Whereas pop and rock for the last several decades have been ruled for the most part by artists who write their own material, in country music the majority of artists do not write their own songs. There are many great songwriters writing country songs and most of them are under contract to one music publisher or another. Publishers' reps in turn pitch the songs to the artists.

Most of these publishing houses are located in Nashville. This concentration of publishing serves much the same purpose as the Brill Building did in New York City for pop and rock artists prior to The Beatles (1964). The Beatles paved the way for artists to write their own material and this shift caused the music publishers of the Brill Building to lose their dominance in popular music and eventually the Brill Building became obsolete. If you haven't heard country radio lately, check it out. The songs sound more like rock than country and the lyrics run the gamut from inventive, clever, or funny to ridiculous, maudlin, or right wing reactionary.

I wanted to use the Jessica Andrews video last Saturday, but I could not think of the name of it, nor could I remember the name of the artist or the album. This gave rise to a classic Google moment this week. The only thing I had to go on was that I knew the lyrics included the word "granddaughter." I realized that even though I could picture the album cover and I could even picture the video, I didn't have much to go on for a Google search. Then on Thursday, I suddenly remembered that the artist was on Dreamworks. Here is what I googled: Female country singer on Dreamworks Records. The first result from Google was Jessica Andrews, score a big one for Google.

Who I Am by Jessica Andrews hit #1 on the country charts in 2001. Who I Am was also the title of her second album, released when she was just eighteen. She had been signed by Dreamworks Nashville and made her first album at sixteen. In 2003, she released a third album and has not been heard from since.

Comments

Sara said…
She looks like she's having such a great time singing that song! Thanks for the Saturday fun.

I really look forward to these.
8/27/2011
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