Caetano Veloso Nega Maluca, Billie Jean, Eleanor Rigby

I was thinking of underrated artists this evening, mostly because I watched a WatchMojo video on the subject. It occurred to me that artists from outside America, or at least outside America and England, get short shrift on these types of lists.

Caetano Veloso has been doing it to death since the Sixties. He's still killing it. He's a master, a spellbinder. America doesn't know him from Jackie Robinson, even though, as here, he often sings in English. (He's Brazilian, by the way.) It's a shame. He's a treasure.

Covers are my thing, as you know. Billie Jean was on the Thriller LP, wasn't it? I'm not a big Micheal Jackson guy. Great LP though, justifiably popular, great performance, great production. As personalized as Michael's performance of this song was, this one goes in a completely different direction and knocks it out of the park. That's art right there, that's command.

So yeah, Caetano Veloso is underrated, along with a lot of other people. I'll be thinking more about it; I'm making notes. But the poor foreigners really can't catch much of a break in America, outside of some plays on NPR and college radio stations. There's a lot of great stuff out there.