But you can’t jump the track/we’re like cars on a cable/ And life’s like an hour glass glued to the table

It was the voice of an angel filtering through my car radio on what was otherwise just another boring drive to work one morning. It wasn’t just the melody or the quality of that golden, silky, voice, but the cover-you-with chills lyrics that made me demand out loud “who IS that singing!” Lucky I was alone or passengers would have thought me crazed.

No one can find the rewind button, girl / so cradle your head in your hands

And breathe, just breath

Who hasn’t felt like this? How many times have you given yourself advice at “2 a.m.” Nursing the broken heart, the lost love, the opportunities missed, the decisions and reflections.

If I get it all down on paper it’s no longer inside of me / threatening the life it belongs to

My writer’s heart and old soul soaked up this song like it was fresh air in a smog-filled city. It wasn’t so much that I loved singing them, but I inhaled them.

It was refreshing, not the I-love-you You-love-me Oh-we-broke-up sludge that is “today’s music.” Too many anorexic girls with unnaturally perfect faces and boys with tousled hair, who sound alike, don’t write their songs, and are marketed like dolls. A friend of mine remarked, over coffee, “who does sing that song?” We searched the music store and when I found the CD it was like Coronado’s gold. The CD has not left my car. It was the only CD I listened to for months. I still vacillate between which song is my favorite.

The singer is Anna Nalick. She writes her own lyrics. She plays guitar. She’s a natural beauty with talent that reminds you of the other singers who will never leave us. Let me introduce her to you.