Having a "Blog Break" in the summer I guess...

Anyway, I happened to catch the tail-end of an impressive musical performance last night on The Late Show with David Letterman. So I hopped on Google which led me to the show's site where I learned that the musical performer had been "Feist". Looking it up on Wikipedia, it was not obvious at first that the performance I had seen was by a solo artist, but I was able to make out that it was Leslie Feist, a fellow Canadian.

Woops, her official site is currently having an "identity crisis". Ugh, check out the referenced MySpace page and get inundated with audio that I didn't necessarily want to hear. Enough of this, go to YouTube and search for "Feist". First link is to a video for the song "1 2 3 4" which happens to be the song I enjoyed on Letterman (to be fair this video is also currently the first one on the MySpace page). Video is kind of cool - the fact that it's all one take, colourful, lots of youth and energy, with (apparently) no special effects. Might take one or two viewings, but it's catchy too. Here's a "Making Of" video too, see if you can spot the differences in the take they used in the final video...

Here's the same song performed on Conan two months ago. Still doesn't compare to the bigger choir and brass sections they had on Letterman. I'd pay to see a show with all those people clapping and singing and playing music... An hour after seeing it on Letterman, I used Google's Blog Search to find out that someone has now posted the performance on YouTube so you can judge for yourself (Update: video taken down, here's another copy).

Then I found this cute video: Some high schoolers re-enacted (and adapted) the video for a senior project. I was impressed enough to leave an encouraging word and rate the video.

Anyway, I'm liking Feist. She reminds me of Regina Spektor in the sense that she seems like another talented female artist that's fresh and new and wholly herself, despite achieving some popular commercial success (i.e. present in commercial and television spots). Do you think music companies are learning a thing or two about letting the artists be themselves? Do you think music companies are learning anything about marketing in the internet age?