Rickie Lee Jones

[David]

Originally Posted by PolishStevieFan

her lyrics can be read as poems.

They are poems. Christgau didn't like her songs or her attitude—he thought it was phony—but just about every other critic from 1979 to 1983 rated her alongside Joni Mitchell.

Are there any fans of Rickie Lee Jones amongst Ledgies?

I was a fan in the old days. I saw her on the Pirates tour in L.A. somewhere, maybe the Roxy. It was pretty harrowing: filled with musical highs and emotional lows, a bottle of bourbon in her right hand.

I saw her again on the Magazine tour, which had Christine McVie alumnus George Hawkins on bass.

I think she squandered her talents and her career. It's one thing to walk your own path and do your own thing, but she took deliberate steps to alienate her dwindling audience the past few decades. It's been a bizarre thing to witness. I think she's kind of screwed up, but in her heyday she was a brilliant storyteller. She created a gallery of characters in her interconnected songs that seem cinematic.