Who 2024

Édith Piaf is almost universally regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Still revered as an icon decades after her death, "The Sparrow" served as a touchstone for virtually every chansonnier, male or female, who followed her. Her greatest strength wasn't so much her technique, or the purity of her voice, but the raw, passionate power of her singing. (Given her extraordinarily petite size, audiences marveled all the more at the force of her vocals.) Her style epitomized that of the classic French chanson: highly emotional, even melodramatic, with a wide, rapid vibrato that wrung every last drop of sentiment from a lyric. She preferred melancholy, mournful material, singing about heartache, tragedy, poverty, and the harsh reality of life on the streets; much of it was based to some degree on her real-life experiences, written specifically for her by an ever-shifting cast of songwriters.

‘Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors,’ Fish’s first solo album post-Marillion, originally released in 1990, has been remixed by Calum Malcolm for 2024. This new remix breathes fresh energy and dynamics into the album, giving it a new lease on life. The remix highlights fan-favorite tracks like ‘Cliché’ and ‘The Company,’ and celebrates the album’s enduring legacy as Fish embarks on a new chapter.

When talking about bossa nova, perhaps the signature pop music sound of Brazil, the first name that comes to mind is that of Antonio Carlos Jobim. With songs like "The Girl from Ipanema" and "Desafindo," Jobim pretty much set the standard for the creation of the bossa nova in the mid-'50s. However, as is often the case, others come along and took the genre in a new direction, reinventing it through radical reinterpretation, be it lyrically, rhythmically, or in live performance, making the music theirs. And if Jobim got credit for laying the foundation of bossa nova, then the genre was brilliantly reimagined (and, arguably, defined) by the singer/songwriter and guitarist João Gilberto. In his native country he was called "O Mito" (The Legend), a well-deserved nickname: Since he began recording in late '50s Gilberto, with his signature soft, near-whispering croon, set a standard few have equaled.