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Yesterday I was filled with grief because a woman I did not know, a woman who was middle-aged when I was born, died. I say I did not know her, and I refuse to make the glib obituarist’s pivot where I say that of course I knew her through her music, because she was not one of those who lay themselves bare in their art, or ever claimed to be.She was a performer, and she was one of the greatest, but she was fiercely, even angrily, private about her interior life, and her singing is a performance of emotion — of intense emotion, rage and fear and loss and longing and lust and power and pain and, more rarely, love — rather than the thing itself. Not that any performance of emotion is ever the thing itself, this side of Lennon and Ono committing their primal-scream therapy to tape. But there’s a sort of double bluff in most pop performances, where the singer first pretends that their expression of an emotion is equivalent to feeling that emotion, and then pretends that they are subject to that feeling. Etta James, like any great singer (or actor, or poet), engaged in the first deception; but she refused to allow her audience the voyeurism of the second.It was perhaps this opacity, this refusal to simulate vulnerability, which kept her from the stardom achieved by peers like Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner. (Or perhaps it was that she spent the canon-cementing 1980s wandering the chitlin circuit on a heroin relapse rather than trying for pop hits.) Sure, she had a few hits — “At Last” will live forever thanks to those swooning strings and Hollywood’s bottomless appetite for an obvious music cue — but she was always more beloved of music nerds than of the general populace, who prefer the songs to the singer.My own introduction was hearing 1967’s “Tell Mama” on oldies radio at a moment when I was scrambling to catch up on soul music after realizing that I loved it as much, or more, than the classic rock music I had marinated in for nearly a decade. Like many a rockist-turned-appreciator-of-black-music, I believed that the more Southern, the more gritty, the more shouted and moaned and stonked and drum-cracked soul music was the better it was. (Similarly, I had in the 1990s dismissed all guitar music without heavy levels of distortion: a mistaking of noise for truth.) “Tell Mama” was perfection, in that understanding; like “Soul Man” or “Mustang Sally” or “Respect” or “Proud Mary,” it hit hard and fast, with a bassline that moved and horns as hard and precise in their attack as rock guitars, Etta howling in her signature rasp at the end, singing lyrics that offered a protective shoulder, but wholly aggressive, wholly fierce in her vocal approach.This is the second time I’ve referred to her as fierce, an adjective that would more often be used to describe her signature look. In a big blonde bob, with eyebrows as artificial as Spock’s, a violent red mouth and a beauty mark so exquisitely placed as to arouse the envy of Marie Antoinette, she made herself up in unapologetic imitation of the sex workers she had admired as a young girl for their power and self-determination. She grew up in a place and time where the blues was the devil’s music and good girls sang for the church, and she did both, singing sweet hymnody and low gutbucket bawd. Her first record, cut when she was fifteen, was a rhythm & blues novelty following in the salty doo-wop tradition of the Midnighters’ “Work with Me, Annie” — both the group’s name and the very title of the song were oblique references to sex, and when white pop belter Georgia Gibbs covered James’ song she had to call it “The Wallflower” because “Roll with Me, Henry” was just too suggestive. Even though there’s nothing whatever in the song suggestive of the singer being a wallflower — she’s lustily forward, and the young Etta James could easily have been considered merely a junior version of such r&b shouters as Big Mama Thornton, Big Maybelle, or LaVern Baker. But she had been infuriated by Gibbs’ cover of her song reaching #1, and she wanted to prove she could sing sweet pop as well as grinding raunch. Her version of the Tin Pan Alley standard “At Last,” cut for Chess in 1960, only went to #47 on the pop chart, but it’s become the definitive rendition, thanks to her dramatic reading of the text and the imaginative string chart behind her. Ever since, she sang both sweet pop and low-down (rhythm and) blues, frequently combining them in novel and unexpected ways.Her rendition of “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” for the short-lived r&b show The!!! Beat in 1966 is instructive as to the perfection of her technique, as she switches effortlessly between a raspy blues snarl and a smooth pop belt, playing jazzily with her own vocals for almost two minutes before letting the band kick in. She frequently imitated the growl and honk of r&b saxophones when singing live, and her sense of timing and rhythm was as much influenced by jazz singers like Billie Holiday as her fellow soul shouters.Perhaps her greatest performance on record was the flipside to “Tell Mama,” “I’d Rather Go Blind” (a one-two combination that makes for one of the greatest 45s ever cut), notable not only for its restraint — it’s a slow burn of a song that never boils over, just simmers achingly for two and a half minutes — but for the precision and eloquence of her phrasing. The emotion performed is a sort of numb, shattered heartbreak, and when she reaches for the high notes the effect of the (apparent) effort is frankly stunning.She went on, into cinematic funk and rock covers and back-to-blues-basics and comeback record after comeback record through the 90s and 00s — her last record was released in 2011, and contains a smirking, ’68-Stonesy rendition of “Welcome to the Jungle” — and like many of the great singers of her generation, was mostly ignored in favor of younger talent and newer sounds. Which is what happens, and her salty attitude — she joked that she was going to beat Beyoncé’s ass for making her look weak in Cadillac Records — was its own defense against the declines of age.Her twilight was long and, aside from the occasional years-of-service Grammy, largely unrecognized; I hope she was able to appreciate the irony of leaving the stage at a moment when her voice was blanketing pop radio thanks to a DJ from Sweden, a producer from Rhode Island, and a rapper from Florida. That the youngest among us were introduced to her through “Levels” and “Good Feeling” is no bad thing. Fifty years after laying the vocal down, she still stole the show. Click for high-res photo

Yesterday I was filled with grief because a woman I did not know, a woman who was middle-aged when I was born, died. I say I did not know her, and I refuse to make the glib obituarist’s pivot where I say that of course I knew her through her music, because she was not one of those who lay themselves bare in their art, or ever claimed to be.

She was a performer, and she was one of the greatest, but she was fiercely, even angrily, private about her interior life, and her singing is a performance of emotion — of intense emotion, rage and fear and loss and longing and lust and power and pain and, more rarely, love — rather than the thing itself. Not that any performance of emotion is ever the thing itself, this side of Lennon and Ono committing their primal-scream therapy to tape. But there’s a sort of double bluff in most pop performances, where the singer first pretends that their expression of an emotion is equivalent to feeling that emotion, and then pretends that they are subject to that feeling. Etta James, like any great singer (or actor, or poet), engaged in the first deception; but she refused to allow her audience the voyeurism of the second.

It was perhaps this opacity, this refusal to simulate vulnerability, which kept her from the stardom achieved by peers like Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner. (Or perhaps it was that she spent the canon-cementing 1980s wandering the chitlin circuit on a heroin relapse rather than trying for pop hits.) Sure, she had a few hits — “At Last” will live forever thanks to those swooning strings and Hollywood’s bottomless appetite for an obvious music cue — but she was always more beloved of music nerds than of the general populace, who prefer the songs to the singer.

My own introduction was hearing 1967’s “Tell Mama” on oldies radio at a moment when I was scrambling to catch up on soul music after realizing that I loved it as much, or more, than the classic rock music I had marinated in for nearly a decade. Like many a rockist-turned-appreciator-of-black-music, I believed that the more Southern, the more gritty, the more shouted and moaned and stonked and drum-cracked soul music was the better it was. (Similarly, I had in the 1990s dismissed all guitar music without heavy levels of distortion: a mistaking of noise for truth.) “Tell Mama” was perfection, in that understanding; like “Soul Man” or “Mustang Sally” or “Respect” or “Proud Mary,” it hit hard and fast, with a bassline that moved and horns as hard and precise in their attack as rock guitars, Etta howling in her signature rasp at the end, singing lyrics that offered a protective shoulder, but wholly aggressive, wholly fierce in her vocal approach.

This is the second time I’ve referred to her as fierce, an adjective that would more often be used to describe her signature look. In a big blonde bob, with eyebrows as artificial as Spock’s, a violent red mouth and a beauty mark so exquisitely placed as to arouse the envy of Marie Antoinette, she made herself up in unapologetic imitation of the sex workers she had admired as a young girl for their power and self-determination. She grew up in a place and time where the blues was the devil’s music and good girls sang for the church, and she did both, singing sweet hymnody and low gutbucket bawd.

Her first record, cut when she was fifteen, was a rhythm & blues novelty following in the salty doo-wop tradition of the Midnighters’ “Work with Me, Annie” — both the group’s name and the very title of the song were oblique references to sex, and when white pop belter Georgia Gibbs covered James’ song she had to call it “The Wallflower” because “Roll with Me, Henry” was just too suggestive. Even though there’s nothing whatever in the song suggestive of the singer being a wallflower — she’s lustily forward, and the young Etta James could easily have been considered merely a junior version of such r&b shouters as Big Mama Thornton, Big Maybelle, or LaVern Baker. But she had been infuriated by Gibbs’ cover of her song reaching #1, and she wanted to prove she could sing sweet pop as well as grinding raunch. Her version of the Tin Pan Alley standard “At Last,” cut for Chess in 1960, only went to #47 on the pop chart, but it’s become the definitive rendition, thanks to her dramatic reading of the text and the imaginative string chart behind her. Ever since, she sang both sweet pop and low-down (rhythm and) blues, frequently combining them in novel and unexpected ways.

Her rendition of “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” for the short-lived r&b show The!!! Beat in 1966 is instructive as to the perfection of her technique, as she switches effortlessly between a raspy blues snarl and a smooth pop belt, playing jazzily with her own vocals for almost two minutes before letting the band kick in. She frequently imitated the growl and honk of r&b saxophones when singing live, and her sense of timing and rhythm was as much influenced by jazz singers like Billie Holiday as her fellow soul shouters.

Perhaps her greatest performance on record was the flipside to “Tell Mama,” “I’d Rather Go Blind” (a one-two combination that makes for one of the greatest 45s ever cut), notable not only for its restraint — it’s a slow burn of a song that never boils over, just simmers achingly for two and a half minutes — but for the precision and eloquence of her phrasing. The emotion performed is a sort of numb, shattered heartbreak, and when she reaches for the high notes the effect of the (apparent) effort is frankly stunning.

She went on, into cinematic funk and rock covers and back-to-blues-basics and comeback record after comeback record through the 90s and 00s — her last record was released in 2011, and contains a smirking, ’68-Stonesy rendition of “Welcome to the Jungle” — and like many of the great singers of her generation, was mostly ignored in favor of younger talent and newer sounds. Which is what happens, and her salty attitude — she joked that she was going to beat Beyoncé’s ass for making her look weak in Cadillac Records — was its own defense against the declines of age.

Her twilight was long and, aside from the occasional years-of-service Grammy, largely unrecognized; I hope she was able to appreciate the irony of leaving the stage at a moment when her voice was blanketing pop radio thanks to a DJ from Sweden, a producer from Rhode Island, and a rapper from Florida. That the youngest among us were introduced to her through “Levels” and “Good Feeling” is no bad thing. Fifty years after laying the vocal down, she still stole the show.

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The thing that you’ll hear a lot of thoughtful people say about 30 Rock, which returns tonight (and I’m so late turning in this copy that many of you will have already seen the first episode of season 6 by the time you read this), is that it’s outlived its own brilliance. This is not unexpected. It’s the pattern of successful comedy to establish a new voice and reshape the world in its image, until the newness has long since leached out of it and the reshaped world becomes once again uncomfortably comfortable, all too familiar. The most frequently-noted exemplar of the phenomenon, The Simpsons, has now been comfortably familiar for at least twice as long as it was shatteringly new; 30 Rock, many observers will tell you, was brilliant for three seasons, then lost its way in increasing cartoonishness and repetition, the inevitable consequence of a changing writer’s room and the Emmy-supported transition from underdog to institution. I just watched the first five seasons within the span of a couple of weeks, and I recognize the sensation of gathering disappointment which tends to come over anyone who’s loved the beginning of a television show as the subsequent seasons try new things and settle into a more sustainable rhythm. The first few seasons were grounded not in realism — in “Tracy Does Conan,” the seventh episode overall and the first great one, Tracy Jordan not only hallucinates a little blue dude but is found bugging out on the ceiling of his dressing room — but in recognizability. Anyone who’s had a difficult friend or coworker understands Liz Lemon’s exasperation with Tracy’s meltdown. But that specific tone became less and less frequent in subsequent seasons as increasingly outlandish actions failed to have plausible consequences. For example, Liz’s romance with Floyd DeBarber in the first season, even though it began with manipulation and betrayal — first she fired his girlfriend, then she eavesdropped on his AA meeting — was more believable and heartfelt than any of her relationships since, from the impossibly handsome and even more impossibly stupid Dr. Drew Baird to the impossibly perfect-for-her Cpt. Carol Burnett. The fact that Floyd was played by sketch comedian Jason Sudeikis, while the others were played by leading man Jon Hamm and movie star Matt Damon, helped — Sudeikis (like character actor Dean Winters, who plays Liz’s permanent mistake of an ex Dennis Duffy) was always a plausible addition to the cast, while Hamm and Damon (and UK leading man Michael Sheen as the intolerable Wesley Snipes) were always only going to be guest stars. The same could be said of Jack’s various romances: great as Isabella Rossellini, Edie Falco, Salma Hayek, and Julianne Moore are, none of them were going to last forever; and unless Kim Jong-Il’s death precipitates a new storyline for Elizabeth Banks’ Avery Jessup-Donaghy, I expect she’s gone too. It could also be said of the various third wheels on the show-within-a-show; neither Lonny Ross’s Josh nor Cheyenne Jackson’s Danny could be more than a vehicle for not-that-bright jokes (or not-that-bright-plus-Canadian) jokes, because Tracy and Jenna suck up all the air in the room, both as comic creations and as outsized performances. The ever-present danger of creating characters who are bottomless wells of need, narcissism, and attention-seeking behavior is that it’s impossible to write them any other way, so their storylines all strike one note. It’s a tribute to the strength of Tina Fey’s writing room that Tracy and Jenna have as much depth as they do; Tracy’s fidelity to his wife and Jenna’s happiness with her boyfriend, who performs as her in drag, are among the most unexpectedly touching storylines on network television, because the exaggerated weirdness of their love lives resonates with the particular weirdness of every love life. But while the personal relationships on the show trend either outlandish or repetitive (how many times can Jack or Liz push back against their mentor/manatee relationship, only to reconcile by the end of the episode?), the show’s satirical purview has only gotten wider. Originally as much a specific satire of NBC (and parent company GE) as of television production and celebrity culture in general, the show has gone on to tackle corporate culture, governmental corruption and oversight, international politics, the death of American manufacturing, the intractable divide between the principles of feminism (or of market capitalism) and lived experience — at times it feels less like watching a sitcom and more like eavesdropping on an intensely sarcastic conversation between extremely well-informed members of New York’s media industry. (A bit like reading Tumblr if your dashboard is configured in a certain way, in fact.) The fact that 30 Rock is written by — and for — people who read The Economist, Variety and 4chan is a strike against it in the eyes of those who think that all television should be aimed at people who don’t know anything in particular; but it’s also been the show’s salvation, because of course the people who make decisions in the entertainment industry read The Economist and Variety — which is how they get away with 4chan. (Full disclosure: I get maybe 80% of the references.) All of that is why I think that 30 Rock, despite its flaws, is probably the greatest piece of art about New York in the 21st century. The immense concentrations of capital — financial, social, and cultural — which have made New York what it is for 200 years are the primary subject of the show, and the gap between the 1% and the 99% which this 30 Rock-less summer and autumn have made clear is not only supported but demonstrated in practically every episode of the show to date, with Jack, Tracy (and, increasingly, Liz) safely ensconced in the 1% and everyone else, Pete and Frank and Kenneth and Lutz and Dennis and even Jenna, scrambling to stay afloat in the sea of the 99%. New York has always been a city where the gap between the rich and the poor was more immediately evident than elsewhere; while 30 Rock addresses class (as such) only rarely, the underlying issues and conflicts of class make up the background hum of the show, in ways both small and silly (the constant unexpectedness of Dotcom’s liberal-arts education) and big and silly (Liz discovering even as she says it that having “like twelve grand in checking” is a social faux pas). As you might be able to tell, I’m really looking forward to its return. I will giggle and sigh out loud whenever Grizz or Dotcom says anything, I will cheer (probably not out loud) when a favorite recurring character like Dennis, Dr. Spacemen, or Angie Jordan appears, I will continue to pine for the unrealizable dream that Jeff Richmond’s original scores will become available for personal listening. I think it’s my favorite television show of all time, but that could be the sleep deprivation talking; thirty-four hours is a lot of television to gorge on. I’m equally excited about Parks & Recreation’s return, and when I watched all of Parks & Recreation over last summer, I was convinced that it was my favorite television show of all time. But 30 Rock was an earlier love and a more ambitious one, if less consistent. As television in the 2011-2012 season scrambles to catch up to a post-Bridesmaids world (mostly by giving Whitney Cummings and Chelsea Handler shows), it’s worth taking a moment to celebrate the original post-millennial dysfunctional female lead, Elizabeth Miervaldis Lemon. Click for high-res photo

The thing that you’ll hear a lot of thoughtful people say about 30 Rock, which returns tonight (and I’m so late turning in this copy that many of you will have already seen the first episode of season 6 by the time you read this), is that it’s outlived its own brilliance.

This is not unexpected. It’s the pattern of successful comedy to establish a new voice and reshape the world in its image, until the newness has long since leached out of it and the reshaped world becomes once again uncomfortably comfortable, all too familiar. The most frequently-noted exemplar of the phenomenon, The Simpsons, has now been comfortably familiar for at least twice as long as it was shatteringly new; 30 Rock, many observers will tell you, was brilliant for three seasons, then lost its way in increasing cartoonishness and repetition, the inevitable consequence of a changing writer’s room and the Emmy-supported transition from underdog to institution.

I just watched the first five seasons within the span of a couple of weeks, and I recognize the sensation of gathering disappointment which tends to come over anyone who’s loved the beginning of a television show as the subsequent seasons try new things and settle into a more sustainable rhythm. The first few seasons were grounded not in realism — in “Tracy Does Conan,” the seventh episode overall and the first great one, Tracy Jordan not only hallucinates a little blue dude but is found bugging out on the ceiling of his dressing room — but in recognizability. Anyone who’s had a difficult friend or coworker understands Liz Lemon’s exasperation with Tracy’s meltdown. But that specific tone became less and less frequent in subsequent seasons as increasingly outlandish actions failed to have plausible consequences.

For example, Liz’s romance with Floyd DeBarber in the first season, even though it began with manipulation and betrayal — first she fired his girlfriend, then she eavesdropped on his AA meeting — was more believable and heartfelt than any of her relationships since, from the impossibly handsome and even more impossibly stupid Dr. Drew Baird to the impossibly perfect-for-her Cpt. Carol Burnett. The fact that Floyd was played by sketch comedian Jason Sudeikis, while the others were played by leading man Jon Hamm and movie star Matt Damon, helped — Sudeikis (like character actor Dean Winters, who plays Liz’s permanent mistake of an ex Dennis Duffy) was always a plausible addition to the cast, while Hamm and Damon (and UK leading man Michael Sheen as the intolerable Wesley Snipes) were always only going to be guest stars.

The same could be said of Jack’s various romances: great as Isabella Rossellini, Edie Falco, Salma Hayek, and Julianne Moore are, none of them were going to last forever; and unless Kim Jong-Il’s death precipitates a new storyline for Elizabeth Banks’ Avery Jessup-Donaghy, I expect she’s gone too. It could also be said of the various third wheels on the show-within-a-show; neither Lonny Ross’s Josh nor Cheyenne Jackson’s Danny could be more than a vehicle for not-that-bright jokes (or not-that-bright-plus-Canadian) jokes, because Tracy and Jenna suck up all the air in the room, both as comic creations and as outsized performances. The ever-present danger of creating characters who are bottomless wells of need, narcissism, and attention-seeking behavior is that it’s impossible to write them any other way, so their storylines all strike one note. It’s a tribute to the strength of Tina Fey’s writing room that Tracy and Jenna have as much depth as they do; Tracy’s fidelity to his wife and Jenna’s happiness with her boyfriend, who performs as her in drag, are among the most unexpectedly touching storylines on network television, because the exaggerated weirdness of their love lives resonates with the particular weirdness of every love life.

But while the personal relationships on the show trend either outlandish or repetitive (how many times can Jack or Liz push back against their mentor/manatee relationship, only to reconcile by the end of the episode?), the show’s satirical purview has only gotten wider. Originally as much a specific satire of NBC (and parent company GE) as of television production and celebrity culture in general, the show has gone on to tackle corporate culture, governmental corruption and oversight, international politics, the death of American manufacturing, the intractable divide between the principles of feminism (or of market capitalism) and lived experience — at times it feels less like watching a sitcom and more like eavesdropping on an intensely sarcastic conversation between extremely well-informed members of New York’s media industry. (A bit like reading Tumblr if your dashboard is configured in a certain way, in fact.) The fact that 30 Rock is written by — and for — people who read The Economist, Variety and 4chan is a strike against it in the eyes of those who think that all television should be aimed at people who don’t know anything in particular; but it’s also been the show’s salvation, because of course the people who make decisions in the entertainment industry read The Economist and Variety — which is how they get away with 4chan. (Full disclosure: I get maybe 80% of the references.)

All of that is why I think that 30 Rock, despite its flaws, is probably the greatest piece of art about New York in the 21st century. The immense concentrations of capital — financial, social, and cultural — which have made New York what it is for 200 years are the primary subject of the show, and the gap between the 1% and the 99% which this 30 Rock-less summer and autumn have made clear is not only supported but demonstrated in practically every episode of the show to date, with Jack, Tracy (and, increasingly, Liz) safely ensconced in the 1% and everyone else, Pete and Frank and Kenneth and Lutz and Dennis and even Jenna, scrambling to stay afloat in the sea of the 99%. New York has always been a city where the gap between the rich and the poor was more immediately evident than elsewhere; while 30 Rock addresses class (as such) only rarely, the underlying issues and conflicts of class make up the background hum of the show, in ways both small and silly (the constant unexpectedness of Dotcom’s liberal-arts education) and big and silly (Liz discovering even as she says it that having “like twelve grand in checking” is a social faux pas).

As you might be able to tell, I’m really looking forward to its return. I will giggle and sigh out loud whenever Grizz or Dotcom says anything, I will cheer (probably not out loud) when a favorite recurring character like Dennis, Dr. Spacemen, or Angie Jordan appears, I will continue to pine for the unrealizable dream that Jeff Richmond’s original scores will become available for personal listening. I think it’s my favorite television show of all time, but that could be the sleep deprivation talking; thirty-four hours is a lot of television to gorge on. I’m equally excited about Parks & Recreation’s return, and when I watched all of Parks & Recreation over last summer, I was convinced that it was my favorite television show of all time. But 30 Rock was an earlier love and a more ambitious one, if less consistent. As television in the 2011-2012 season scrambles to catch up to a post-Bridesmaids world (mostly by giving Whitney Cummings and Chelsea Handler shows), it’s worth taking a moment to celebrate the original post-millennial dysfunctional female lead, Elizabeth Miervaldis Lemon.

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