Current Best Song in the World: "Express Yourself" -- Charles Wright

This song is one of Anne's favourites, and she slipped it into the opening slot of her deliriously great I Know You've Got Soul mix - not only a groovy, heart-swelling pack of organic funk tunes, but one of the very best compilations I own. For those of you who wish to make your own, let me know, and I'll post Anne's careful-and-brilliant tracklist. :)

But it's "Express Yourself" that rules this disc, a king with a crown of gold and jujubes. The bass boop-dee-doops (it's wearing a fuzzy hat and a long poofy shirt. The shoes are beautiful brown leather, though), the guitar rings out a good, open time, horns toot and root and add punctuation marks (! ? . , : !!!!!!1!!). And Charles Wright? Well jesus god, he is simply the voice of that spirit we want living inside all of us, hollering and coaxing and screaming. he throws aside "uh"s like the sun tosses off sunbeams - they're casual, magical things, the pixie dust that gives Peter Pan his air. and that bass just keeps struttin', the horns building to a loose, long cadence that cuts off just before things end, giving Wright another excuse to prove that the baptists have got it right: random warblings are the holy ghost, that glorious pow-pow-powering sound that puts lives together and lets the birds sing.