tell Laura I love her

Forget the fatty Adele, forget the ugly female Duffy, or whichever young lady who sounds like she is in her fifties. Here’s the beautiful Laura Marling.

Poorly informed as usual, I only got to know Laura Marling from the announcement of Mercury Music Prize nominees last week. And she simply stood out among the ten nominees.

She easily reminds people of the likes of Feist, Cat Power or KT Tunstall. But she’s only 18, wow! And she looks cool, like a very charming model, wow! And of course she composed her own music, wow! And she designed her own interesting Sunbox CD box set, wow! And, what, she even has a beauty mark on her face! Wow wow wow! How could it be true? She could only be an imagined character from a romance fiction. She’s too good, to the point that she’s almost disgusting, hah! She’s so bright that she just makes other stars look dim, and makes ordinary people like me feel like a hopeless idiot.

But her true roots lie in the good folk tradition. She’s the musical granddaughter of Joni Mitchell. Her voice is warm and sweet, at times with a country twist. Listening to her reminded me of many other good female vocals - female voices of the sixties (umm, which I really don’t know much) like Sandie Shaw, Dolores O'Riordan without the exaggeration, and many more. Unlike the bunch of talented young ladies who sound sophisticatedly soulful but affected and way too old, She’s capable of sounding sophisticated, effortlessly natural, and still youthful.

All her MVs are beautiful (for she’s charming). And here on the TV show, she’s so overly talented that she’s put on a trial by the show host, who was like accusing her of writing too mature songs for her age.


Enfants terribles! All the old ghosts of precocious young talents came to my mind once again. Not long ago, I was just disturbed by another young talent called Sarah Jaffe. If I were not a fan of Jason Castro, I wouldn’t have learnt about this unsigned Texan musician, who has an influence on the former. She also reminded me of Feist and Cat Power. Her musical roots were also mostly folk. But she tends to sing with a slightly cracked voice and her music is darker than Laura’s and resembles more the earlier Cat Power and Jeff Buckley. And… she is less good-looking than Laura Marling.

And her video here is rather boring despite the good song.

So, where are the precocious boys now?