Diana Krall Analysis

Jazz has gone up and down throughout history in terms of popularity. At one point, jazz was the most popular music in America without any other genre giving it any competition. This popularity, just like all other fads, eventually came to a close. After the 1950’s, multiple other genres began to take charge of the field of popular music. Jazz never disappeared, but it never regained the cultural impact that it once did. There has been a recent, even if small, bump in listenership in recent years. This could very well be because new modern jazz artists like Diana Krall. Not many modern jazz artists are able to get their names out there anymore because pop music has too much control over the industry. Somehow despite this, Diana has been able

to become a celebrity.
Diana Krall was a musical person her entire life and she most likely can thank her family for this. While growing up in Nanaimo, Canada, her father, Jim, owned a massive collection of both sheet music and records of all kinds. Her mother, Adella, was an avid pianist and singer. Thanks to Jim and Adella, Diana Krall was getting lessons in the piano at the age of four. Even though this was fun for Diana, it was not her passion. She actually wanted to be part of the Canadian space program. Her musical tastes also veered more towards popular rock music from bands like Supertramp. This is not what you would expect from a future jazz superstar.
Even though Diana’s interests ranged far and wide, she did stick with the piano. At the age of just fifteen, she was offered a job playing at a local bar and restaurant. Sadly, Krall did not have the confidence in her voice that she should have, so she avoided singing as much as possible. Two years later, she was accepted into a scholarship program at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. This is where Diana finally found her voice.
Nearly two years later, Diana met legendary jazz artists Jeff Hamilton and Ray Brown. These two saw the incredible potential in the young Ms. Krall. These two men convinced Diana’s family that she would be able to succeed. This was enough for Diana’s parents to give her the blessing that she wanted to be able to take on the world of jazz. At twenty-six years old, Diana started to play with bands professionally. Just three years after that she released her first album. After this her popularity exploded, earning numerous awards and becoming an icon in the music industry. The odd part about this is that she didn’t even release any original songs until fourteen years after joining her first band. This raises an interesting question: how exactly was Diana able to become so popular in an uncommon genre so quickly with material that has been used for years?
This year in America we have Star Wars, Terminator, James Bond, Jurassic Park, and even a Clinton versus Bush presidential race. Oddly enough, we also had all of these thirty years ago as well. Today’s world is incredibly nostalgic. We love the things that we are comfortable with. Books, movies, politics and so many things rely on decades-old material to be successful. It works extremely well too! The new Star Wars movie will not be released in theaters until Christmastime, yet it is already breaking records in ticket sales. If this can work for media and politics, why shouldn’t it work for music?
All of that being said, the original Terminator has not hit a sales spike this year to my knowledge. The movies recreated cannot be the same as they were thirty years ago, because even though people like familiarity, they still get bored if things are identical. They need a twist. New technology, a more modern and relatable story, or something to make it relevant to today’s day and age is necessary. This is where Diana Krall works her magic.
Krall is an expert in taking old music and adding her own twist and style to make them wildly popular again.

This is largely due to Diana Krall’s personal style of jazz. She has a slight swing style in her composition and plays the piano very fluidly. With the addition of her unique voice. It is able to sound both feminine and tough at the same time. The combination of her smooth sounding voice with a still punchy rhythm allows her to take control of the stage while she is performing. Some of this style begins to lean slightly towards pop music instead of sticking strictly in the jazz world. While this has brought new listeners to jazz music once again, it also created enemies for her. Fans of traditional jazz music have begun to turn on Diana Krall for moving closer and closer towards pop music, claiming that she is no longer an actual jazz artist. This could, however, be the creation of a new style of

jazz.
This new style being introduced into new songs is very clearly displayed in the song I Remember You. This song was originally recorded by Nat King Cole and there are significant differences between the two songs that are immediately apparent. The intro to the original immediately opens up with lyrics that are actually skipped in the Diana Krall version. There is also a massive difference in tempo. The newer version has a relatively quick and upbeat percussion riff in the background whereas the King Cole version has a very slow and smooth violin opening. Four measures into Diana’s song, wind instruments join in with a flute taking the lead. This is very similar to the Nat King Cole version where the flute is the head of the music behind the lyrics.
Forty-three seconds into the song the first head begins and Diana Krall enters very smoothly on a low note. Her voice remains almost whispery throughout the section. The wind instruments take a rest throughout most of the section except for during lyrical breaks when pretty and smooth melodic phrases are played. The percussive riff continues in the background of the song as Diana Krall Sings
This is much different than the first head of the Nat King Cole version.

The lyrics are significantly more drawn out with longer notes in the classic version of the song. Nat King Cole also has a much different style of singing. Instead of using low and smooth notes throughout like Diana did, Nat King Cole focused on a variety of pitches from very low to very high, as well changing his volume quite a bit more. The original song, while it is slower, does not feel as soothing and pretty as the newer version created by Diana Krall.

The second head is completely new to the Diana Krall version. It has a lyrical break for the entire section of the song. The wind instruments, with the flute once again taking the lead played a smoothly flowing melody, accented with high piano phrases played by Diana. This was a stark contrast from Nat King Cole’s music. At this point in the music, the two versions diverge almost entirely. Nat King Cole never truly take a lyrical break like in the newer version, instead he simply moves directly on to the next

verse.
The next section of the piece is the coda. Diana Krall makes a smooth entrance lyrically as the wind instruments are cut. This is a nearly identical repeat of the second half of the first head until five measures prior to the end of the coda. At this point, the notes are dragged out and made even lower to set up for the outro of the piece. While Nat King Cole did also change his voice to prepare for the outro, he did it in the exact opposite manner. Instead of dropping the pitch and lowering the volume, he hit a higher note and projected his voice. While radically different, both methods allowed for a very smooth transition into the outro of the song.
Diana Krall ends her singing just before the outro begins. The constant background riff that had been playing through the entire song comes to a close four bars from the end. It is once again heavy on the flute but ends on a very pretty two-bar piano solo. This once again differed greatly from the original version of the song. In Nat King Cole’s song, he sang almost all of the way until the end of the piece with only one to two bars remaining afterward. By this point in the song, few aspects are even remotely similar.
While there are similarities between both versions of the song, the differences are very apparent. Other than just the structure of the song itself, the largest differences are primarily in style. While the original song was extremely slow throughout with a wide variety of pitches sung by Nat King Cole, Diana Krall took a slightly different approach. Krall very rarely even raised her vocal notes above the bottom of the staff. She also added a very catchy backbeat that carried the music significantly quicker than in the original. This catchy backbeat along with the faster pace is what carries these older songs closer to modern popular music and attract a larger audience. This gives Diana’s jazz a slightly different feel than most other jazz music in America right now. As mentioned earlier, this has created some tension among fans of classic jazz.
This change doesn’t seem to bother most people, as Diana has gained fame that almost no jazz artists ever receives anymore. This new type of jazz has gained enough popularity that it could revolutionize jazz music and create a new style of jazz once again. It also still has enough of the older jazz elements to strike a chord with nostalgic mindset America seems to be getting in recently. This would be a great thing for jazz in today’s world when popularity has been declining for decades. Something new and fresh could revive America’s love for jazz at least a little bit. Diana Krall could very well have changed the jazz world forever.