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JOHNETTE NAPOLITANO

"We're at a crisis point in the human race," Johnette Napolitano made the observation. "If people made art a priority in their lives, they’d be much happier. If you’re making good art, you’re digging. Childbirth is not a pleasurable experience. But can you say it’s not worth it?...I just do whatever art presents itself." 

The band Concrete Blonde was formed in 1982. 'Joey' was one of the hottest songs of 1990. Johnette acknowledged, "That song, it has a life of its own. I was very taken aback by the mail I got after that came out, and still do. Am I sick of it? Nope. Nothing wrong with having a hit song, especially one that came through from the heart, strong and true. It's taken a lot of years to just appreciate my own songs as good songs and not drag myself through those times every time I sing it. I'm just happy people are happy to hear it." 

Of the making of 'Joey', Johnette recounted, "We did a demo with no lyrics. It was just like scratchy vocals, just me making sounds, basically, where I knew the melody would go. And right away everybody reacted to it. There weren't any lyrics, but there was something about the music that everybody really reacted to. And so we went to England to record the record with Chris Tsangarides, our producer. I knew what I wanted to say, but I wasn't looking forward to saying it. And so it was the last vocal that I recorded. And I remember Chris every day, 'Do we have vocals to 'Joey' yet? Do we have words to 'Joey' yet?' And I'm like, 'Not yet.' So I literally wrote them in a cab. I knew what I was going to say, it's just a matter of like a cloud's forming and then it rains. The lines are forming in my head and they're all in my head, and I know the chorus, and I know what I'm going to say. It's just a matter of fine tuning the details and how I'm going to lug it out. And then it rains. The clouds all formed and it rained. And then it happened. And that was it. And it was just there." 

Of their 3rd album 'Bloodletting', Johnette remembered, "One of the biggest shocks of my life was when 'Bloodletting' came out...I just thought, 'OK, nobody is going to relate to this. Nobody but me.' It was the most amazing thing to find that it was such a universal thing. It was a real revelation to discover that the closer you get to your own truth, the more universal it becomes."

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