{"id":5736,"date":"2006-12-22T09:19:53","date_gmt":"2006-12-22T14:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5736"},"modified":"2010-07-15T23:32:14","modified_gmt":"2010-07-16T03:32:14","slug":"jennifer-holliday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=5736","title":{"rendered":"Jennifer Holliday’s Need"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Holliday singing “And I am Telling you … I’m not goin'” on the 1982 Tony Awards.<\/a><\/p>\n

Doing this 8 shows a week?<\/p>\n

Are you kidding me? <\/p>\n

It’s so raw and so pained that it’s almost hard to watc. When she’s clutching his face. It’s so needy you feel embarrassed, for her, for him, for yourself because you’ve been there, but maybe you weren’t brave enough to express it. You’re embarrassed because Need itself is mortifying. <\/p>\n

(Thanks, Alex<\/a>)<\/p>\n

And today I also just read this<\/a>. Nice analysis of the song itself – and makes me even more excited to see the film.<\/p>\n

A couple cool excerpts:<\/p>\n

In fact, ‘And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going’ is a kind of summary of the great American diva tradition, our native answer to the grand opera aria-belters of the old world.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And this:<\/p>\n

The term diva has gotten rather watered down in current pop culture usage, to the point where the title is given to any moderately famous actress or singer with an air of hauteur about her and a personal trainer in her employ. But, in the classical musical formulation, Paris Hilton is certainly no diva\u0097and for that matter, neither is Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston. Old-fashioned divadom entails not just an imperious attitude and a big voice, but a theme\u0097pain, particularly as supplied by callous men and cruel fate\u0097and a task: to transcend that anguish through cathartic declamation. You know the divas of whom I speak: Maria Callas, Edith Piaf, Billie Holliday, Garland, Aretha Franklin, and today’s Queen of Pain, Mary J. Blige. And now, perhaps, Jennifer Hudson.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I love that: “a task: to transcend that anguish through cathartic declamation.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jennifer Holliday singing “And I am Telling you … I’m not goin’” on the 1982 Tony Awards. Doing this 8 shows a week? Are you kidding me? It’s so raw and so pained that it’s almost hard to watc. When … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5736"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5736"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21479,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5736\/revisions\/21479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}