Daliah Lavi
The Best Of

Another journey to rediscover pop music, why not? Well, there are some reasons not to, primarily because nobody cares about pop music anymore; first of all, does pop music even exist? I would say no, at least not around here, not in the classical sense of the term that the talented colleague Spoonful proposes on these pages. Hollywood and the '80s marked the end of this purely, exquisitely European "ideal"; ABBA, the greatest standard-bearers of this genre, stopped in 1981, effectively leaving the field open for different kinds of artists who would completely change the perception and way of interpreting pop music, imposing new rules with the brute force of the Dollar and new mass media. The results are clear to everyone; today it’s not about melodies anymore, just characters (whose arrogance is directly proportional to their mediocrity), image, music videos, and gossip. There are no more interpreters, everyone feels capable of transmitting a message, no matter if it's fake, useless, constructed, or insignificant.

O tempora, O mores! Today's mainstream is a latrine, period, a fact, but complaining for its own sake is even worse. There are and will be good (P-O-P) artists, you just need a little passion and goodwill, and you'll find them in abundance; unfortunately, many people lack these qualities; they prefer to complain about talent shows and be led to the flock by the pundit of the moment. But Daliah Lavi came before all of this, she is a symbol of a lost era, an era that undoubtedly ended for "natural" reasons as it had exhausted everything it had to express, but that does not deserve the oblivion it has been consigned to. Born in 1942, in what was still the British Mandate of Palestine at the time, elegant, beautiful, Daliah soon embarked on a prolific acting career that culminated in 1967 with a role in "Casino Royale," the first 007, and concluded a few years later. Starting in the early '70s, she settled in Germany and abandoned the big screen in favor of music, establishing herself as one of the top figures in the Schlager scene. Schlager!? What’s that? Quite simply, it’s Central European easy-listening based on carefree songs and sentimental ballads, orchestrations, little guitars, folk hints, one of the most kitsch things ever invented, in short. Even if only for a short period, she too was Schlager, just saying.

But Daliah Lavi was kitsch in just the right way, never excessively, and above all, she had Class. Oh, and also a beautiful voice, velvety, flexible, particularly expressive, thanks also to her background as an actress. A perfect entertainer and excellent interpreter, capable of tackling classics of various genres, in German and adapted with custom lyrics: the classic country of "Lonely Hearts Club," Dalida's "Il Venait d'avoir 18 ans," Steve Wonder's "I Just Called To Say I Love You" in a pleasant synth-poppy style. Delicacies like Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind", which Daliah honors with grace and the right melodramatic charge, "Soldiers Who Want To Be Heroes" by the singer-poet Rod McKuen, with its bittersweet cheerfulness and a "Nichts haut mich um, aber du", aka "I Get A Kick Out Of You," tackled with a delightfully dreamy and "sugary" touch. And also "Ein Schiff Wird Kommen," which deserves even more special appreciation: for me, "Ta Paidia Tou Piraia" is only the one by Melina Mercouri and the cover (still in the original language) by Pink Martini, I never liked the various "Never On Sunday," but Daliah Lavi manages to find the circle's square with a natural, spontaneous grace that perfectly captures the essence of the song.

And of course, many retro "tunes," B/W postcards, or extraordinarily vivid and colorful, as I see them: the "crown jewel" is certainly "Jerusalem", a sinuous and melancholic folk ballad with an absolutely impeccable melody, then "Schicksalmelodie," a suggestive classical digression, "Schalt Dein Radio Ein," and "Wer Hat Mein Lied So Zerstort, Ma?", pleasant musical-cabaret numbers, the brilliant gypsy-Balkan melodies of "Liebeslieder Jener Sommernacht" and "Akkordeon," and every now and then a big ballad; but it fits perfectly; these are simply "songs," no fuss, no ostentation. And indeed, by now, Daliah Lavi is for the few, certainly not for those who want to show off or seek something that goes beyond the simple concept of "entertainment music" tout-court, a concept that in my opinion deserves ample space and credit. For me, a pop enthusiast with ultra-conservative tendencies and a convinced Germanophile, an album like this is manna from heaven, for others it may represent something different, perhaps something not exactly positive; and that’s fine with me. The important thing is to have talked about it, to have offered a unique perspective. That said, happy 2016 to everyone, and so on and so forth blah blah blah...