Songs about computers and odes to the cell phone are pretty much anathema to this feature, so it’s something of a surprise to find that Jill Barber’s ‘Beautiful Life‘ has made the cut. There’s a reason – and it’s not that the lyric video is a real artwork, although it is. No, it’s because Jill Barber has put together a really catchy takedown of the whole social media whorl. She knows it isn’t real life, we tend to agree. Real life is “I’m still in last night’s make-up / The kids are waking me up / I’ve got Cheerios stuck to my feet” and we can relate to that, well apart from the make-up. And in these cash strapped times it’s Generic Supermarket Round Cereal rather than Cheerios – pay for a brand? That’s gig ticket money you’re wasting there. But without being nit-picky we get where Jill Barber is coming from. Life is what you live, not what you watch on the screen (although, obviously some Americana UK shaped exceptions exist for every such statement).
Vancouver based Jill Barber has a new album ‘Homemaker‘ out in February 2023. She says of the album that “These songs are so damn personal, and such a deep reflection of my soul, that I felt an almost maternal instinct to both protect them and produce them for myself. I really feel like I stepped into my own power as a producer on this record, with a lot of generous assistance from engineer/producer Erik Nielsen, who really championed my abilities in the studio.”
