Come Away With Me (2002)

Rolling Stone (3/28/02, pp.68,70)
- 3.5 stars out of 5 - "...A quietly captivating triumph of torch song[s]..."

Entertainment Weekly (12/20-27/02, p.128)
- Ranked #10 on EW's list of 2002's "Albums of the Year"

Entertainment Weekly (3/8/02, p.73)
- "...Jones' album has the lope of Western swing and the flow of a good live set....Her voice is supple and precise, her touch on piano lovely..." - Rating: A-

Down Beat (June 2002, pp.63-64)
- 3.5 out of 5 stars - "...Jones delivers...multigenre cross-cultural eclecticism....It is a voice containing seductive mysteries and also the most exposed human vulnerabilities..."

JazzTimes (6/02, p.88)
- "...Ranks among the most bracing and beautiful in recent memory..."

Vibe (4/02, p.168)
- 3.5 discs out of 5 - "...She allows a pared-down, semi-acoustic backdrop to showcase her lilting soprano....an auspicious debut..."

Mojo (Publisher)
- Ranked #74 in Mojo's "100 Modern Classics" -- "[S]eductive, mysterious songs, slouched jazzily around the rhythm, and slipped in a lonesome touch of twang."

Mojo (Publisher)
(April 2002, p.110)
- "...Jones' debut is a calming delight, a delicate acoustic dance that pulls country, blues and jazz into a gorgeous, soft-edged rootsy singer-songwriter world...Soothing and substantial."

Even before Norah Jones’ debut album, Come Away With Me, was released, there was already a buzz on the then 22-year-old singer-songwriter-pianist. She was heralded by Rolling Stone as one of ten “Artists to Watch” in 2002 with the headline “Jazz Nerd Becomes Piano Seductress,” and Entertainment Weekly singled her out as one of the coming year’s “Brand New Heavies.”

Prior to those prognostications, the Texas-raised, Brooklyn-based Jones had garnered a small local fan base, entertaining those in the know in intimate New York clubs, from the Living Room on the Lower East Side to Makor on the Upper West Side. But once her CD was released on February 26, 2002 on Blue Note Records, Norah Jones was introduced to the rest of the world—and she took it by storm. Less than a year later, Come Away With Me, buoyed by her hit singles “Don’t Know Why” and “Come Away with Me,” has sold multi-platinum in the U.S.; she has appeared on numerous television programs (from Leno and Letterman to Saturday Night Live and the “Elvis Lives” special); she was featured on the cover of Vanity Fair’s annual music issue; and VH1 presented her with the Lolita Ford Award as the best new female artist of 2002 (she also performed on the televised VH1 “Big in 2002 Awards” show).

Chris Willman, writing in the year-end “Entertainers of the Year” issue of Entertainment Weekly, recalled the bewitching effect Norah’s disc initially had on listeners: “Jones instantly became our sultry siren of song, reviving the ideal of the wounded romantic who spends the wee hours pining and being pined for—Frank and Ava rolled into one alluring package.”

For Jones, the entire 2002 experience has been nothing short of a whirlwind. Come Away With Me not only became a hit in the U.S., but it has also been a huge seller overseas (selling platinum in Holland, Australia, Portugal and Hong Kong; double platinum in the U.K., Ireland and Singapore; and quintuple platinum in New Zealand). Total sales worldwide are over five million copies. Jones and her band (guitarist Adam Levy, bassist Lee Alexander and drummer Andrew Borger) have toured throughout Europe and Japan; in the coming months a live concert performance filmed in New Orleans will be aired throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and South America for her fans who couldn’t get tickets to her shows.

Jones has reacted to all the acclaim in a modest, understated way. She described her CD as “my moody little record” to Rolling Stone and told Jazziz magazine, “You know, I’ve been lucky. I have the fortune of being surrounded by people who don’t want to exploit me, who love music and don’t want to cash in. That’s the fortune that a lot of people haven’t had.” Los Angeles Times writer Don Heckman described Jones as having “a strikingly mature attitude to all aspects of her budding career.” Talking to him about her meteoric rise less than a month after her CD release, Jones said, “It’s already exceeded my expectations in the response it’s gotten from friends and from some of the press, and that means that the people who are most important to me liked it. Right now, that’s enough.”

Born in New York City in 1979, Jones’ musical story begins in Texas where she grew up and attended the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas. While she listened to the pop and country music her mom and grandparents liked (such as Aretha Franklin and Willie Nelson, respectively), she was bitten by the jazz bug, studied piano then majored in jazz piano at North Texas State University. But in the summer of 1999, Jones took a trip to New York City and never moved back. Instead she hooked up with some local songwriters, began writing tunes and performing at small clubs. An employee in the EMI Royalties Department approached Blue Note Records, best known for its legacy of jazz recordings, with Norah’s demo in 2000 and she was signed soon after in January 2001 by the label’s president Bruce Lundvall. In Time magazine, he praised her “signature voice, right from the heart to you” and noted, “When you’re lucky enough to hear that, you don’t hesitate. You sign it.”

Working first with top-notch producer Craig Street (Cassandra Wilson) and then legendary producer Arif Mardin (Dusty Springfield, Aretha Franklin, Willie Nelson), Jones recorded Come Away With Me—an album of originals, songs by band members (bassist Lee Alexander and former guitarist Jesse Harris) and brilliant covers of John D. Loudermilk’s “Turn Me On,” Hoagy Carmichael’s “The Nearness of You” and Hank Williams’ “Cold, Cold Heart.” Mardin told Blender magazine, “We recorded the old way: People played, people sang, lots of eye contact. {Norah’s] a jewel.”

On working with Mardin, Jones said, “I was nervous at first. I didn’t want some amazing producer who’d done all these famous records to come in and have me be scared to tell him what I thought. But Arif is the nicest guy in the world, very easygoing. He was there to keep my act together and make sure I got a good record…I never thought I’d have a record like this—I thought it would take at least five years before I’d reach that point. This is really the record I wanted to make.” Lundvall noted, “Norah’s recording is not exactly a jazz album, but it is jazz-informed…The best thing is to say she’s beyond category.”

Come Away With Me is a soft-edged and slow-paced CD, soothing and inviting, bittersweet with equal measures of wistfulness and reverie. Jones plays the role of a storyteller who recounts tales of empty rooms, cold hearts and dreamy longing. The production is stark, yet subtly textured with National steel guitar, slide guitar, accordion and fiddle on some tunes. Philadelphia Inquirer music critic Tom Moon wrote, “Her art is all hints and suggestions, the unsaid stuff that hangs heavily in the air, the calls that go unmade…her preferred mode of expression is a wistful hush, intimate at the start, that gets deeper as the story unfolds…It’s this humanness that makes Come Away With Me so intoxicating…Jones celebrates the fleeting nuances that most pop singers steamroll over.”

Come Away With Me is one of those rare and alluring recordings that people buy for their friends. It doesn’t overpower, but sinks in with its soulful beauty. From its beginning, the CD’s success has relied on the songs and Jones’ subtle delivery instead of a build-up of hype. She cracked the Billboard Top Ten pop charts on her own terms and has been touring non-stop since the CD’s release. She’s also made some new musical friends along the way, including Prince who invited her to open an acoustic guitar showcase he presented at his Paisley Park Studios (she called it “a just-pinch-me-I-can’t-believe-we’re-here moment”) and Willie Nelson, who invited her to open his shows at his four-night stint at The Fillmore in San Francisco (she labeled it “the highlight of my life [because] he’s one of my big heroes”).

Come Away With Me has been an auspicious start to Norah Jones’ career. With the CD still selling briskly, 2003 promises to bring more people into her fold. As Rolling Stone commented, Jones “has proved along the way that it doesn’t always take bump-and-grind for a woman to sell a million albums.”