Jan Terri

Janet turned me on to Jan Terri the other day.

Terri is an ‘outsider’ musi­cian. Or, to put it another way, she writes naive-​but-​brilliant pop songs then per­forms them in a sub-​karaoke style so jaw-​droppingly bad that it beg­gars belief.

Inter­est­ingly, Terri’s work is con­ceived as a mul­ti­me­dia pack­age—she first came to the atten­tion of cit­i­zens of her home­town of Chicago by sell­ing VHS tapes of her per­for­mances while she worked as a lim­ou­sine driver—and, like her deliv­ery, these promos are spec­tac­u­larly inept.

So, what raises Terri’s work above the level of the plain old shite? Her non­cha­lance. Jan Terri knows that she is a great song­writer, Jan Terri knows that she is an attrac­tive woman, Jan Terri knows that by rights she should be top­ping the pop charts. That few of these things are true mat­ters not: Terri’s self-​belief is con­ta­gious because she hap­pily goes about her busi­ness, putting almost no effort into her per­for­mances, so sure is she that the mantle of great­ness is upon her.

Here is Jan Terri’s best song, and best video, in my view, Losing You. I’m par­tic­u­larly fond of the lit­eral visual inter­pre­ta­tion of the lyrics. And the fact that she looks like a black pud­ding in those leathers.

By way of con­trast, here is Get Down Goblin, a Hammer horror inspired Hal­loween song. At first view­ing I wor­ried that the rel­a­tively high pro­duc­tion values of this piece diluted Terri’s appeal, but the moment roughly halfway through when she appears to forget that she is being filmed is so charm­ing that I came around. Also, the scene in which Terri mimes an organ solo on a piano is, per­haps, an image that speaks more elo­quently of Terri’s genius than words ever could.

See also: Baby Blues a love song which is, quite frankly, deeply ter­ri­fy­ing, and per­haps the equal of Losing You (note that the blue-​eyed sub­ject of the song is played by a man with brown eyes). And finally, there is Little Brother, which both dar­ingly appro­pri­ates Frere Jaques and fea­tures a nod to the Shangri-​Las with its spoken intro­duc­tion. Terri also released an album, High Risk, but, sadly, I can find no trace of it on the web.

Update: it has been brought to my atten­tion that Jan Terri’s genius has been brought to the atten­tion of the head of a major record label, and that a cer­tain lupine pop star may have plans to cover Get Down Goblin—the Jan Terri revival starts here?

Posted at 6pm on 11/07/06 by Jack Mottram to the music category.
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Tags: music, outsider, video