I have found a new favorite musician.
Hubby likes to watch reaction videos on YouTube. He was watching The Charismatic Voice, which features the vocal analysis of singers by Elizabeth Zharoff, a professional opera singer, and thought I’d be interested in a specific episode. Elizabeth is a delight to watch, so definitely check out her channel.
The singer she was reacting to was AURORA (spelled with all-caps normally, but I’ll only do it this once in my post), specifically a live version of the Murder Song (5,4,3,2,1): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAssbDhU1gs.
I was so blown away and captivated by Aurora’s performance that I had to know and hear more. According to Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(singer)], she is a Norwegian singer who was born in 1996 and released her first single, “Puppet” in 2012. By 2015, she was gaining popularity beyond her native Norway in Europe and the United States.
That was 8 years ago. During this time she has released four albums, which leads me to ask, “Aurora, where have you been?” Which really translates to, “Why have I not heard of you before this year? Have I been living in a box in a cave under the sea?”
Well, apparently. Or, I’m old and out of touch.
Although, I’d like to think that neither is the case. Instead, I believe that I became accustomed to being served a rather limited amount of media during my formative years and assume that I should still know all that is going on in current pop culture.
Three main television channels in my youth and radio airplay of the Top 40 songs each week, plus magazines, newspapers, and the occasional movie when I came across them, made up my pop culture diet, but that was the pop culture diet a majority of Americans were also consuming. We were fortunate when a band that was popular in a small local scene, like Duran Duran, made it big, so we could get to know their work.
With the explosion of cable channels (MTV went on the air when I was in middle school), the internet, and streaming services, there are far too many avenues to explore for any individual to know all of pop culture. With a planet of over 7.8 billion people, there are loads of super creative and talented people who are making art and music of all kinds. It’s bound to take us some time to run across their work.
I mean, hey, it took me longer to discover Muse [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muse_(band)] than it did Aurora, although I was more peripherally aware of them due to hearing them on the radio.
I’m just thankful my husband brought Aurora to my attention now and I’ll have many years of enjoying her music. Plus, there will be many other talented people creating wonderful things for me to discover in the future, even it if takes me a while to find them.
I’ll leave you with links to a few other Aurora videos and her website. Not only does she have an ethereal voice that is captivating, she is a trained dancer who is fascinating to watch.
Aurora – Running with the Wolves – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06ht9MyJLT4
Aurora – Conquer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmVAmlpbnD4
Aurora – Cure for Me – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K17df81RL9Y
Aurora’s website: https://www.aurora-music.com/#home
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