I have a question…

Why is it that jazz and blues singers can make sounding bitchy so much fun to listen to?  You take a blues man and they can make heartbreak and a cheating significant other sound heartbreaking in the most beautiful way.  You take a jazz singer and they can make their own insecurities sound like Christmas morning.

Heather Rigdon falls into my favorite three contemporary female jazz singers, joined by Diana Krall and Jane Monheit.  Rigdon’s voice is sultry enough to enthrall and smoky enough to captivate, but more than that she has an “it” factor about her, something that makes her more than perfect for a worldwide audience.  As she sings “Young and Naïve”, the twin demons of youth and foolish self-reassurance make it very clear that she has complete control over the subject matter.  She displays the sophomore know-it-all confidence while combining the insecurities that come with youthful promises of love and affection.  Where she has that element of “I know what love is” in her voice and motives, the man she turns away shows that same naivety with his reckless promises of giving her the world. 

Having listened to music for a good chunk of my life at this point, I always laugh at such gifts.  The world.  Everybody claims they want the world, and those that get it turn it away because its never what they want it to be.  Where Rigdon succeeds is in unsuccessfully trying to get her would-be suitor to turn away from her, all the while she finds him to be incredible in almost every capacity.  “You look like a face in the movies/Your kiss is straight out of a dream”.  She sees the attempts at courting her while all the same laments turning him away.  The very title is a bit of a double entendre, referring to her in one sense as the woman who can’t find herself accepting what seems like a good thing; referring also to the man, or boy (the “young” part lacks precise clarity) who doesn’t seem to know when to stay away.  Persistence is great, sure, and he’s not stalking like Bobby Valentino, but he is showing himself to be – and forgive me for this – too young and naïve to actually be with such a woman. 

It’s a catch twenty-two, and perhaps that’s the best part of the song.  It shows how fruitless the entire endeavor is, on both fronts, and it sounds damn good in the process.  But for pete’s sake, Rigdon, you sound SO bitchy. 

And that’s a beautiful thing.