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A Forgotten Artist
YouTube recently introduced me to late 60’s / early 70’s folk singer Melanie Safka. Wow, was I impressed! It looks like she could have held her own with the likes of Baez, Mitchell, and Joplin.
My question, directed primarily toward those who remember that era, is why is she NOT mentioned in the same breath as Joan, Joni, and Janis? She performed at Woodstock and on several high-profile American TV shows, so she got her share of mass media exposure and acclaim.
Why did her star fade to the point that I’m only now finding out about her?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBvSNRGWIO8
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10 Replies
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Oh… I read/saw something about her either online or it was on a DVD of 60s stuff I borrowed from the library, Thankyou for providing YT link, because of visual reference you provided, I matched name with face and recognized who she is?…
Did a Google /Wikipedia search on her… Known as “Melanie” back in the day….
Not sure why she wasn’t more known as you’ve said… Perhaps her choice, or other reasons…
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I never heard of Melanie, but her songs and singing style for me has some similarities to Joan Baez. I don’t know the history of her career. How long was her career, did she stop before her potential was realized? I guess a lot of factors.
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“A Forgotten Artist”
That’s a big call to make in this club David.
She maybe forgotten by young fellows like you, but us oldies here can’t forget songs like this one:
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I had actually heard that one song, Howard, although I didn’t know the name associated with it until recently.
I came across this interview with Melanie from 1991 in which she explains the unlikely inspiration for “Brand New Key”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtVYFC4cfrw&t=378s
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Melanie was pretty big in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Brand New Key was likely her biggest hit. She really shows her vocal range on Lay Down (Candles in the Rain). It was released in 1970. Mike.
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I only ever heard of Melanie from that DVD from library I had borrowed or wherever source I had seen her from… So to be fair, prior to that, was not familiar at all with her, unless I heard her songs on radio as a kid in the 70s, just not realizing it was her singing them… ?
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I remember her since I was DJ’ing on Armed Forces Radio at the time. I always thought “Beautiful People” from Woodstock was her tour de force. “Momma Momma” and “Birthday of the Sun” (from Woodstock) were almost as good. After that she was basically just another hippie chick with a happy sounding song. Baez and Mitchell were doing social issues and Janice was a sound you just couldn’t ignore, but there were probably 10 others that all sounded like Melanie and most were-one-hit-wonders. She’s put out a lot of work, but its just never really caught on. Some of it was may have been the way she was promoted – she was always just a little too clean cut and what was selling was the “bad girl” image.
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Thanks for the insight, Jim. That all sounds very plausible, and it’s not the type of analysis that one can just “look up”.
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Gotta be honest here… I used to like a few of Melanie’s songs, but she was my ex-wife’s favorite singer. I have a lot of trouble listening to her now!
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Melanie only really had a few hit songs but she had a good voice and was certainly attractive. I certainly haven’t forgotten her. She wasn’t really forgotten from what I can tell. Her name pops up once in a while.
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