Aesthetic similarities & the musical theatre

Clean lines drawing attention to the necks of chanteuses in profile? Am I the only one who sees the cover to Feist's new album as an homage to the cover of the mutant disco diva Cristina's classic 80s album?

Ms. Feist and her album, The Reminder, appears to be receiving the overhype treatment. Read about it in the New Yorker, Venus Zine (Sassy - they are soooo not), Bust, etc. Usually I'm very wary of music and artists who get this type of makeover treatment (Feist was Peaches' onstage cohort "Bitch Lap Lap"). I'm sure the blogs are clogged with gushing praise for Feist - blogs usually written by curmudgeon men in their 30s whose hipster glory is fading like denim jackets decorated with band buttons or whose leather jackets are getting stiff and cracked with age and responsibilities. Hey wait a minute...

But I couldn't suppress a silly grin and an awkward foot shuffle while watching the presumptively shot in one-take video for the single, 1 2 3 4 dir. Patrick Daughters. I love any music video with Busby Berkeley-esque kaleidoscopic choregraphy (e.g., Björk's It's Oh So Quiet dir. Spike Jonze & Aphex Twin's Windowlicker dir. Chris Cunningham). And, of course, I'm a sucker for Jazzercise.



And here's a Cristina track on the Sleep It Off album, Cristina as Jenny with Ben Brierley as Macheath - Mackie Messer ("Mack the Knife") singing Brecht & Weill's Zuhälterballade (Ballad of Immoral Earnings a.k.a. Tango Ballad) from The Threepenny Opera.


To be thorough, the graphic artist behind Cristina's Sleep It Off album cover was Jean-Paul Goude. Goude used the same aesthetic for his [now] ex-wife, Grace Jones' album, Slave to the Rhythm.