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Shuffled! is a weekly column appearing every Thursday here on BPRLive. Each week, we welcome a person from the APA community to share some thoughts about the music they listen to. Check out the Shuffled! archive for past articles.

Today’s Shuffler: Melissa Li
Melissa Li is a singer-songwriter, filmmaker, musical theater composer, and all around snob. Despite not being the perfect singer or the perfect songwriter, she obnoxiously bashes other people’s music skills. Recently she has teamed up with equally obnoxious slam poet Kit Yan for the Good Asian Drivers Tour, during which they traveled for 12 weeks across the country and back eating food and occasionally performing. Melissa is a lesbian and therefore loves Ani DiFranco but finds it annoying when other people tell her they sound similar. She wrote a queer Chinese musical, Surviving the Nian in 2007 and won a ridiculously coveted Broadway award. She loves East Meets Words and Boston Progress. She is a full-time performer living in New York City.

Now, let us peep her shuffle…

“Save Hawaii”
Kit Yan
Ok, so it’s pretty funny that I open up my iTunes and the first “song” that comes up is Kit’s piece about his hometown. In this piece, he muses about the changes of the corporate landscape of Hawaii - the Wal-Marts and the K-Marts creating jobs for the people, moving along the economy, while stripping everyone of the culture and beauty of the land. We’d recorded this track at WMFO Tufts University’s Freeform Radio on an exceptionally warm day late March. Kit likes to tell the story about how he performed this at a slam and got an exceptionally low score on it because someone “didn’t understand his accent.” I think it adds a lot of character and is one of the loveliest pieces in his repertoire.

“Steady Pull”
Jonatha Brooke
When The Story broke up and Jennifer Kimball and Jonatha Brooke went separate ways, no one knew what was going to happen. Thankfully, instead of crashing and burning, they both were actually pretty damn good on their own. “Steady Pull” is the title track of Jonatha’s second solo album, not counting a live disc she put out in ‘99. It drifts away from her usual acoustical folksy production and features a hip-hop sound, weaving in beats and instruments that make you just wanna groove along to it. But really, my favorite thing about Jonatha is her attitude, so apparently strong in her voice especially when she’s stretching a high note. She really nails it. You can find me unabashedly singing along full volume to this song when I’m in the car - I don’t care who’s watching.

“Swim”
Ani DiFranco
I sent this song to my ex when we broke up, because I felt it spoke to how she may have been feeling at the time. She thanked me for it, and said it was perfect. But besides the lyrics, which reflected on the idea of truly finding your individual strength by leaving a relationship, can we just take a moment to listen to those harmonics on that guitar? There is some incredible shit going on here. I remember my jaw hanging open the first time I heard this live - Ani standing alone on that gigantic Orpheum stage with nothing but a guitar. This song (Ani would humbly call it a “ditty”) makes it abundantly clear that she is without a doubt one of the greatest songwriters of our generation.

“You’re Timeless to Me”
Christopher Walken & John Travolta
Hairspray, one of my favorite musicals. First it was a campy John Waters film. Then it was a hit Broadway show. Then the hit Broadway show became a film. Can someone say, enough already?? What’s next, Hairspray 2? Couple of things to say about the recent new glossy Disney Channel-esque film remake. John Travolta not only can’t sing anymore but can never compare to Divine or Harvey Fierstein as Edna Turnblad. Michelle Pfieffer is also unconvincing. The musical was dumbed down for tweens, apparent in their casting of tween hearthrob Zac Efron, Amanda Bynes, and James Marston. I still bought the CD because I admit I have a crush on Queen Latifah and I like their packaged pop production of the score. This song is so well-written and Mark Shaiman is one of my heros, but the omission of the cute old couple banter that was written into the original stage production and performed by Fierstein and Latessa leaves me disappointed.

“Love Love Love”
Tristan Prettyman
I’ve been a little bit obsessed about this song, so I’m actually pretty excited to get it on my playlist. Kit and I listened to Tristan Prettyman for a large part of the tour. She’s not a particularly good lyricist, but there’s something about that West Coast carefree spirit that makes me fall in love instantly. Delicate and girly, Tristan has a way of making me wish I was back on the California highway.

Last 5 posts by shuffled

• On The Shuffled! Side Of The Ear: Bryan Thao Worra - November 20th, 2008
• Shuffled! Saymoukda "moOks" Vongsay - November 13th, 2008
• Shuffled! Charles Jang - November 6th, 2008
• Shuffled! Emily Lawsin - October 30th, 2008
• Shuffled! Grace Talusan - October 23rd, 2008

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