TNB Night Owl – Norah Jones

PIANO BAR neon light. From the Billy Joel video, "Piano Man". Image captured by the News Blender.

Just to mix things up and get a little crazy this Monday morning, tonight’s Owl (or this morning’s Owl – depending on your relative perspective) features someone and something from this century. The someone is Norah Jones, and the something is her refreshing style of easy-listening smooth jazz, which is often blended with subtle textures of blues, folk, country, and pop, the latter of which has helped make her music commercially successful. (And there’s nothing wrong with that.)

Jones has a genuinely unique musical pedigree. Her mother, Sue Jones, is a concert producer. Her father was a world famous musician and composer from India who travelled the world promoting North Indian classical music. Ravi Shankar influenced The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and others, to include sitar music in their compositions. (George Harrison, in particular, became something of a devotee of the instrument.) With successful parents to teach and guide her, Jones (whose birth name is Geethali Norah Jones Shankar) learned multiple aspects of the music business from a young age.

Usually, songs in Night Owl playlists are primarily chosen from the Billboard Hot 100, especially if they made the Top 40 of that chart. Tonight’s playlist springs from a chart we’ve never sourced before: the Adult Alternative Airplay (AAA or Triple A) chart, where Norah Jones has excelled.

2002
Don’t Know Why (3:03)