A Beautiful Melody for today's #TuesdayTune

Hello sweet friends-welcome to this week's #TuesdayTune post at NatashaInOz.com

I can't stop listening to Melody Gardot.

Melody Gardot is a Grammy-nominated American singer, writer and musician in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Have you heard her story? It is incredible....

While cycling in Philadelphia in November 2003 she was hit by a Jeep Cherokee whose driver had ignored a red traffic light. She suffered serious head and spinal injuries and her pelvis was broken in two places. She was confined to her hospital bed for a year where she had to remain lying on her back the whole time. Even today she can't sit for too long due to a misaligned pelvis and she uses a cane to stand and walk. She also suffers from regular neuralgic pain which is partly alleviated by a Tens device (a black box sending electrical impulses into her body to stimulate endorphins). A further consequence of her injuries was that she had to re-learn the most simple tasks like brushing her teeth and walking. The most noticeable effect of the neural injuries she suffered is that she was left hyper-sensitive to both light and sound, therefore requiring her to wear dark sunglasses at nearly all times to shield her eyes.

Source

The accident also resulted in both long and short term memory problems and difficulty with her sense of time. Gardot has described coping with this as like "climbing Mount Everest every day" as she often wakes with no memory of what she has to do that day.

The accident had damaged the neural pathways between the brain's two cortexes which control perception and higher mental function, and made Gardot (in her own words) "a bit of a vegetable." As well as making it very hard for her to speak or communicate properly, she found it difficult to recall the right words to express her feelings. Studies of the brain have shown that listening to music and making a verbal attempt to sing or hum is thought to help the brain form new pathways. As part of Gardot's therapy, she learned to hum and was eventually able to sing into a tape recorder. Gardot then began writing music and has now become an advocate of music as therapy.


"Without any room for compromise, music is the reason why am I speaking to you," she says in a light lilting voice, which never rises above a gentle murmur. "Flatly and deeply, in the sense that if I had not been doing music I would not be speaking the way I do now." Source.

The first songs she wrote described her emotions during the long and painful rehabilitation, including one song called Some Lessons, which has the line "to think I could have fallen a centimetre to the left/I would not be here to see the sunset or have myself a time". Those early recordings were released as an EP called Some Lessons - The Bedroom Sessions, attracting enough online attention to see her signed by a major label for her full-length debut, Worrisome Heart.

After meeting her in New York City in 2008, producer Larry Klein began working with Gardot and they released her second album, My One and Only Thrill, on April 28, 2009. From this album, the song "Who Will Comfort Me?" became a top 10 hit at Smooth Jazz radio.

Please sit back, relax and listen to the beautiful #TuesdayTune "Baby I'm a Fool" from My One and Only Thrill.

I hope you enjoyed listening to this beautiful melody for today's #TuesdayTune!

I love hearing music from all around the world and learning about new artists so, if you have ever shared a song on your blog, I would love it if you could link up with me in my weekly Tuesday Tune Linky party!

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Thank you so much for dropping in and visiting me in my little corner of the world today. If you have time, please let me know what you thought of today's song and please also pop back later to listen to some other fabulous songs that my blogging friends from all around the world have shared. After all, 

“Music brings people together. It allows us to experience the same emotions. People everywhere are the same in heart and spirit.”

I hope that you have a beautiful and song-filled week!

Best wishes,

Natasha In Oz