Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull's singing voice is like an open wound, a raw badge of suffering and
self-examination that sounds best when the music gives Faithfull room to bleed. That
happens on about half of Kissin Time, a set of collaborations with younger male admirers:
Beck, ex-Smashing Pumpkin Billy Corgan, Pulp's Jarvis Cocker, the men of Blur. But the
better half is superbly barbed pop, poisonous honey in the brutally honest tradit... More >

She's a professional sufferer, to be taken seriously as who she is rather than what she symbolizes. That said, and despite two dull Billy Corgan copyrights, these collaborations with the likes of Blur and Beck are her best bunch of songs since--not Broken English, that's ridiculous, but Strange Weather or A Child's Adventure. And that said, its peak is a ghost closer from the '60s, Goffin-King's supremely untortured "I'm Into Something Good"--inspired by Earl Jean's version, not Herman's Hermits', all feminists devoutly hope. (Grade: B+)