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Joan Armatrading.
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Critical Essay by Jamake Mamake Highwater
Though she comes from the West Indies, you will hear little calypso, steel band, or reggae in the world of Joan Armatrading. Her real musicial life began when...
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Critical Essay by Patricia Ann Brody
A prevailing theme that can be pinpointed in Joan's work, whether in her guitar playing or songwriting, is fierce independence. "I've always b...
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Critical Essay by Ken Tucker
"To the Limit" is Joan Armatrading's most satisfying album of folk-jazz musings because it's her most open, accessible work…. ["T...
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Critical Essay by Jon Pareles
Crazy, extreme, unfettered emotion is Joan Armatrading's uncontested domain. Her songs prowl restlessly "from the bottom to the top," rarely settling...
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Critical Essay by Peter Reilly
"To the Limit" is a serious and, at times, puzzling album…. [The] lyrics (particularly in such as Taking My Baby Uptown, Your Letter, and You Rope Y...
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Critical Essay by Mary Harron
[Joan Armatrading] is sexually ambiguous, and that is what all independent women are nowadays, whether they are heterosexual or not.
The ambiguity comes from the conflict...
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Critical Essay by Marianne Meyer
[Joan] Armatrading avoids self-absorption or cosmic commentary in her work. Her lyrics have an intimate narrative quality (which she insists is not autobiographical) b...
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Critical Essay by Jon Young
[Steppin' Out is] an excellent, no-nonsense display of Armatrading's power as a performer and composer. Avoiding the extremes of folkie mawkishness and safe d...
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Critical Essay by Susin Shapiro
[Joan Armatrading conveys] a tensile sedateness and haltingly eloquent mournful phrasing in Back To The Night…. She claims the influence of Van Morrison and Joni...
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Critical Essay by Aida Pavletich
Joan Armatrading is an exciting guitarist as well as the mistress of a large, boomy voice. Her melodies are touching, though set to lyrics that are mystifying at best....
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Critical Essay by Richard Williams
["Joan Armatrading"] is the most fascinating [album] I've heard so far in 1976….
[It is] a completely convincing marriage of form and con...
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Critical Essay by Caroline Coon
["Joan Armatrading"] is as perfect as it's possible for an artist to make without leaving you with the uncomfortable feeling that it represents the...
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Critical Essay by Sheila F. Younge
Joan Armatrading's songs are personal and introspective with the emphasis more on lyrical than musical invention. She writes with vivid imagery…. Alrea...
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Critical Essay by Ray Coleman
With her oblique, uniquely structured songs and a voice that swirls so passionately around the words that you just have to listen carefully, Joan Armatrading has quickly ...
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Critical Essay by Georgia Christgau
Armatrading's recent album, Show Some Emotion, revealed an evolving star in touch with herself…. (p. 59)
Armatrading has rocked out, or tried to, sinc...
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Critical Essay by Ariel Swartley
Last year's Joan Armatrading was an intriguing mix of sensitivity and bravado—wry, confessional love lyrics and syncopated, idiosyncratic melodies. In pa...
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Critical Essay by Fred Schruers
Show some emotion. It's an instruction so direct that it reads as something strange and hollow. If you don't already trust Joan Armatrading as an exceptio...
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Critical Essay by Jamake Mamake Highwater
