Diana Krall - The Growl is a pussycat

[KiwiCoromandel]

The Growl is a pussycat

March 25, 2005

She earned a nickname for being grumpy, but singer Diana Krall now seems to be enjoying herself. Bernard Zuel has a good idea why.

There are some people for whom having a reputation as a royal pain in the backside is a badge of honour. They'll buff their notoriety with well-placed stories to the gossip pages of the Sunday papers or throw in the occasional act of bastardry in public to remind us. There's no subtext: it's all me, you minion.

Diana Krall is not one of these. She's still bruised by a year in which, somewhere along the line, a decade-long reputation for being a little bit stroppy, a little bit demanding morphed into something stronger. A year in which an already existing reluctance to be interviewed - a trait that is, strangely, not at all uncommon among entertainers - turned into a physically and emotionally wearing battle.

For the 39-year-old Canadian singer and pianist, whose successful straddling of the line between jazz and pop pre-dates recent travellers such as Norah Jones, the "trouble" started when she began writing songs in her late 30s. The songs came as one way, maybe the only real way for her, of dealing with the deaths of her mother and two of her mentors, singer Rosemary Clooney and jazz musician Ray Brown in 2002. Her marriage to singer-songwriter Elvis Costello followed in 2003.

Read more.........

http://smh.com.au/news/Music/The-Growl-is-...1525274109.html