Arts and Culture
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In the interest of a new year, I would like to come clean about something. It’s a secret that I probably would have kept hidden as long as possible, had music not gotten in the way. So, with a deep breath, here it is: I watch One Tree Hill. Every Monday night, without fail, I am sitting in front of the TV with tweens and teens around the country wondering what is going to happen to Lucas, Peyton, Nathan, Haley and Brooke.
If it were not for this show, however, I would have never known about a British indie singer/songwriter named Michelle Featherstone. She seems to have had quite a bit of success in the television market in particular. OTH has featured her songs ten times in its six year run; she also had a cameo in the third season finale. Her music has also been used on shows such as Grey’s Anatomy, Ghost Whisperer and Las Vegas.
Most of these songs can be heard on her 2006 release Fallen Down. An intimate look at life and love, it’s so beautifully depressing at points – kind of like a teen drama – that you can’t help but listen over and over again. She is at turns empowering, submissive, hopeful and heartbreaking. Songs such as “Stay”, where she questions, “If I promise not to fight, at least not tonight / Would you stay the night?” and “Coffee and Cigarettes”, which examines rearranging one’s life and giving up bad habits only to find that what you really need to do is give up on the person you’re with, have an almost mystical quality to them. Perhaps it’s because they really make the listener contemplate the lyrics.
Featherstone is set to release her follow-up LP Blue Bike by next month. According to her Myspace, some of those songs have already been featured on MTV’s The Hills, but that’s a show I would NEVER admit to watching.
