Everybody was marveling in itty-bitty Quebec, this Christmas season, over a certain Christmas-themed new CD release, from the artist formerly known as... Rita-Rita. Now, do not get me wrong here: I always thought the artist in question is a diamond in the rough, an overlooked and too often underrated TRUE ARTISTE - who simply had the misfortune of having tried to start off her career in a most commercial (and sort-of corny, tongue-firmly-in-cheek) way, as "Rita-Rita" - she who sang surrounded by alien misfits and other oddities...
I liked the "joie de vivre" and all-around contagious goofiness that permeated the atmosphere when Rita-Rita sang... uh... okay, I forget the title of the one track that made it as a single release (and that got a video-clip shot for it as well) but I remember that it sure did ROCK!
And that should be good enough for YOU too!
;)
Now, we are in 2008 - soon to be 2009...
"Rita-Rita" is long dead - for years now, the artist formerly known as her has gone by and carried through with her true name, Maryse Letarte - a serious turn for serious recognition in the otherwise never-serious industry...! Maryse is even a pundit blogger like me, a journalist-in-her-spare-time, on VOIR.CA - click here for one of her most incendiary posts so far...!
Now, again, don't misinterpret me (and my sarcastic tone!) - for I'd rather see Maryse Letarte with a blog than the likes of France D'Amour, Marie-Élaine Thibert or any other airhead whose name I forget that sings in "la belle province" - QUAWBECK...! If any of them has something intelligible to say, it should be Miss Letarte... (Okay, let's call her Miss Maryse instead - cause I know French and I know the good sense of not focusing too much on certain last names - including my own, whenever I find myself anywhere within the damnable "Francophonie" anyway...!)
Maryse Letarte did deliver a gem in the rough of a Christmas CD (to her own image, hence) - but to see the hypocrites who call themselves music experts (the critics) go gaga over it when, just a few years ago, they ostracized any artist from over there that DARED introduce a few English words into their songs... Artists such as Marie-Philippe and Léandre (both of whom have vanished from the industry since - not-so-coincidentally!) seemingly driven away from the business much like people were stoned and driven off in ancient times...! Well, that turnabout from the critic collective is an about-face that simply makes me want to... vomitar! It's about time you retards allowed for a mish-mash of languages in song, of culture in art overall - because that is what miserable QUAWBECK is fortunate to have become, after the historical mistake that gave BIRTH to it in the first place...! This place should probably have NEVER been inhabitated by anyone other than the "autochtones" - the indigenous locals who had always been around originally! But to have taken so long (since the 1980s) to have realized that it owes so much in modern times to anglo-saxon culture, to various european influences and as many languages, to Italians, Portuguese, Greeks, Latinos of all ilks, and certainly to our neighbouring American cousins... to have taken DECADES to accept that an artist has a sacrosanct right (mush more than a prerogative) to sing, write, perform in a MULTILINGUAL WAY - well, the evidence is there and critics must be numbskulls indeed!
Ironically, in taking the "serious turn as a serious artist" and being hailed for her insertion of another language into her latest work, Maryse Letarte has also joined the ranks of the critic collective, on Voir.ca.
Aller voir ça...!
So nice from Miss Maryse to have us be able to listen to her material for free - on her website!
You won't see Céline Dion do that!
Hmm...
Me, I still think the ULTIMATE CHRISTMAS ALBUM emanating from these parts remains luminous CLAIRE PELLETIER's... "Le Premier Noël."
Miss Maryse can be a close second - absolutely.
A nostalgic fave, Francine Raymond, was part of the recording of ESPÉRANCE - although not a Christmas song per say, for little luminous me and my money (that glows in the dark, surely, up to an hour after leaving my hand...!) it is the best one to convey the true CHRISTMAS SPIRIT...
Lyrics like "des quatre coins du monde, un cri d'ESPÉRANCE..." have the same effect on me as the wonderful question asked by Band Aid (along with their chorus urge to FEED THE WORLD...) - "do they know it's Christmas Time?"
Do the critics know the true meaning of Christmas, themselves - really?
Hmm...
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