Rock, country, jazz, blues, soul and now danceable pop, Imelda May can sing it all with a disconcerting honesty and a sense of rhythm and phrasing that is certainly innate. She made a name for herself by revisiting 50s rockabilly, with a pin-up look, and is now an artist who strings her bow together as many ways to captivate and surprise her audience.
Her music reflects who she is, what she loves and how she feels. "Sometimes I want to write dark, sad songs and sometimes I just want to dance," she says. An instinctive and almost spiritual way of composing that cannot be confined to one musical framework. This is why the singer, always in search of new sensations, sails between styles, appropriating them for the better, always according to her moods.
Because it is a certainty that the Irish prodigy, whose dazzling career can now be counted in decades, has always been able to remain faithful to herself. With her deep voice, her obvious sensuality and her poetry, she listens only to herself while remaining loyal to her lifelong friends. Jeff Beck, of course, with whom she has shared the stage as well as the writing of her albums. Ronnie Wood, who still accompanies her on guitar on her latest album.
And at almost 50 years of age, the singer reveals yet another of her multiple facets by trying her hand at uncomplicated pop and melodious rock. Her voice is always suave, almost animal, and she radiates all the sensitivity and glamour that we know her for, creating a joyful folk atmosphere on stage that is bound to lead to love at first sight!
On the stage of Brussels, a club in the Irish capital, an artist is hidden in the shadows. She was only 16 years old, but already had a fierce desire to break into the music business. One evening, she was joined by a passing guitarist while performing Rolling and Tumbling. It was none other than Ronnie Wood, famous guitarist of the Rolling Stones, whom she would not meet again until 20 years later.
15 years after her debut, the young artist formed a band and finally emerged from obscurity with her single, Love Tattoo. With her deep voice and pin-up look, she reinvents rockabilly with chic and charm and is a hit! Three times platinum in Ireland, she topped the charts in her native country and toured the world, transporting an already conquered public back to the 1950s.
The woman who made a name for herself in rockabilly, who played alongside Jeff Beck at the 2010 Grammy Awards and who became Ronnie Wood's accomplice is changing course! The artist is not afraid to take risks and return to the style of her teenage years, more influenced by soul and jazz. Her fifth album, Life Love Flesh Blood, was recorded with the help of T-Bone Burnett and puts forward these sounds that fit perfectly with her suave tone. The turnaround is successful!
Imelda May is a complete artist who never ceases to amaze us. 11 Past The Hour is a nugget where the singer's influences and maturity are passionately mixed. From the very pop Made To Love, which she performs with her friend Ronnie, to the rocking Just One Kiss in a duet with Noel Gallagher, she once again tugs at the heartstrings with accuracy and poetry.
Imelda May never ceases to surprise us with each of her new appearances in France. From being the boss of rockabilly, she has become the chic and wise mistress of a sensitive rock that veers dangerously towards a terribly catchy pop and a haunting blues. There is no doubt that this Irishwoman, who has managed to mix genres as few have done before her, is immensely talented.
Elegant piano ballads (Diamonds), top-of-the-range rock songs (Made to Love) or intimate folk (Don't Let Me Stand on My Own) pass between the two blues-jazz wonders, set with strings, that open and close the album: the title track and Never Look Back, which the beautiful Irishwoman, a superb lyricist, delivers in spoken word mode over cello staccatos, bringing us back to her other great passion: poetry. The most beautiful album of the former Rockabilly Queen.
What a transformation for the woman I loved to follow in her 50s period and who now delivers sensual rock and pop. A fascinating concert as Imelda May is so generous on stage, thank you madam!
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