Linda Sharar's "Everyday" Album

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Full of Treats

I've told Linda that I'm a Janet Jackson or Teena Marie or even Annie Lenox type, but her latest album, "Everyday" is extraordinary. Usually, when I listen to a CD, three of the songs might fully grab me. With this collection of 13 songs, not being grabbed was the exception.

"Round the Corner;" "A Little Will Do;" "Harmony With You;" "Give It Your Best;" "Safe House;" "Great Expectations;" "Windows on the World;" "One Another;" and "Missing Helen" all moved me hugely and were my favorites. I loved that "Round the Corner" encouraged me to believe that what I was hoping for was just around the bend; "A Little Will Do" was about how, of course, she wants it all, but a little will do.

"Harmony With You" had great lyrics, e.g., "[Harmony is]...like dancing, sometimes like making love -- one voice below, the other up above...." "Give It Your Best" was all about not being unhealthily competitive; "Safe House" might have been about trying to re-program a lesbian kid by sending her off to an ex-gay conclave; "Great Expectations" was a sad one about a girl, who became anorexic and how grateful the singer was that her parents did not have unreasonably high expectations of the singer the way the anorexic friend's parents did of the anorexic friend. And then "Missing Helen" made me miss my dad of blessed memory.

At the end of the album, Linda includes an "Easter egg,' where her young daughter, at two years old, sings, "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Itsy Bitsy Spider." How marvelous! Listening to Linda, and in some of the songs her sisters, singing artfully about subjects I related to made me calm, and then thinking about her as an IBM colleague, who's also a popular musician, made me proud.