Spectacular performance. That band is rock-solid. Michelle was and is magnificent. She is still writing, recording and touring to this day. We should remember they are promoting the then-new album Hotel Paper, and they're probably making an effort to reproduce the sound of the record. They absolutely nailed that with Are You Happy Now. All You Wanted is an older song and by now they've played it hundreds of times. The band again duplicated the album version closely, but Michelle took some liberties so to speak. I think she was having fun with it at this point. Fun fact time. When Michelle was touring, she also wrote songs (which I believe she still does). Many songs were written on stationery from the hotels Michelle was staying at. That is where the name of the album came from-Hotel Paper.
That's Kenny Aronoff on the drums, who recorded on this album and others with Michelle. In the studio musician world, if you're looking for one of "the best of the best of the best", you hire Kenny. Michelle is just ridiculously good as well at *20 YEARS OLD* - insane!
People say “they sound just like the studio” a lot now even when a lot of the times they mean to say that they can in fact sing live but they don’t truly sound like the studio. But the first performance, Are You Happy Now ACTUALLY sounded like the studio. This was the closest I’ve heard someone have the same tone they had on the studio that isn’t a big vocalist. It’s very hard to explain, because many times when someone says “they sound just like the studio” it can also be because they’re lip singing to a track BUT the first performance it’s flat obvious it’s live. It’s not the same studio track or a backing vocal, yet she had the same tone. It was pretty impressive and refreshing to see. I’m even more surprised because this is really the only time she actually sang Are you happy now and hit all the notes. She doesn’t sing it like that other times, it’s like she actually really tried this time. Thereafter she would sing the top notes which are C#s a little flat for someone reason. She’d sing Cs instead. But here she nailed every single note. The more bizarre thing is that All you Wanted did NOT sound anything like the studio in my opinion. I think she wore her voice out by then because she sung that second song the way she usually does live, a bit slanted and curves the notes a lot. But again, for the first performance, it’s the same tone, and phrasing and technique and style. Loved it. I’m so happy she did it at least once.
For those who thinks these sound like the studio versions, go listen to them again. She is clearly performing this live. She still sounds great, don’t get me wrong but it is clearly not a mixed and produced song for a CD.
