Johns: Jonathan Richman

Jonathan Richman: Amazing Grace

[purchase]

I can't believe I made it all the way to Tuesday and I still get Jonathan Richman!

Here is the closing track from his 1976 self-titled album. Richman's personality and song delivery is always off-kilter, tentative, stripped to the threads of what holds a song together. I still remember how I felt when I heard this song for the first time: after an album's worth of kinda kooky songs—"Abominable Snowman in the Market," "Hey There Little Insect," "Here Come the Martian Martians"—he closes with this simple, affecting interpretation of the classic. Hearing Richman's interpretation is like hearing the song for the first time. It's almost childlike—innocent, free of pretense, pure.