written by Eric Bazilian

produced by Rick Chertoff

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Golly... for a chick with an often wild, erratic-sounding voice, Joan

sure delivered at least one of them well.

 

I’m making this page on July 9th, 2021, the day after the

59th birthday of Joan Elizabeth Osborne. Hope you’ll please forgive me for being unable to do it yesterday, and Happy 24-Hour-Belated Birthday, JO!!

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So when I went to read up about Joan, and first of all her birth details, the first word—or place—my eyes caught was Anchorage. For just a second, I thought, she’s from Alaska? Jewel’s home state? That’s—

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...Oh. Anchorage, Kentucky. Suburb of Louisville. Gotcha. So Joan’s from the Jelly state (that’s a semi-ribald joke), born and raised, moving to NYC around her mid-20s and originally wanting to be a filmmaker—at least studying for it. But after regularly singing at an open mic night in the Village, the musicians—little doubt amused and intrigued by her unique vocals—wanted her to keep coming back. So a musical career it was for Joan, and has since been. She founded her own band and label in the early ’90s, and released one album I’m not sure anyone but her knows about. But she since got her major recording contract, starting with Mercury—a now defunct label that was part of PolyGram at the time—and released her big-label debut, Relish, on the vernal equinox of ’95.

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Aside from the mega-hit here via which everyone knows Joan’s name—or at least her voice, and the words—just ask anyone if they can not sing this song—Relish dropped the singles “St. Teresa,” which charted (well), “Right Hand Man,” which charted (barely), and “Ladder,” which did not. With the niche help of the other bizarre and unique concoctions on the album, “One Of Us” pushed it up to #5 on both the Canadian and UK charts, and #9 in America.

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Joan’s next album didn’t come until five years later, and none of them have since measured up to the initial success Relish and its big hit single netted her, but that’s all right: not unlike many other artists especially floating around the music biz in the 21st century, she’s bounced around half a dozen other labels, releasing her most recent two records on her own, Womanly Hips, and has garnered enough of a fanbase to stand on her own and support her career sans mainstream smashes.

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One thing folks like about “One Of Us”—the fastest song songwriter Eric Bazilian ever wrote, according to him—is that it takes a clean, wondering look at faith and spirituality, posing literal questions to us, the listener, on the nature of Christianity, but also neither subtly nor overtly intending to jeer, scorn, discredit or omit any other religion at the same time. One thing I like about it is that Joan’s tone, her voice in slight contrast to the music, is a bit more reserved than on some of her screechy, yodel-y numbers, somewhat mirroring the innocent and innocuous touch of the lyrics.

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“The album version starts off with the first four lines of a recording titled ‘The Aeroplane Ride,’ made on October 27, 1937, by American folklorist Alan Lomax and his wife Elizabeth for the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress, with Mrs. Nell Hampton of Salyersville, Kentucky, singing a variation of the 1928 John S. McConnell hymn ‘Heavenly Aeroplane.’”

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Have notes to add? Let me know!

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YT:

full version

music video

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Joan’s official website