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Self-Absorption Making a Nation of Artists

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My Morning Jacket, Martha Wainwright benefit from oversharing
Well-wrought self-absorption could be making us a nation of artists.


Oversharing is the latest indulgence embraced by one generation and worrying another. Teens and twentysomethings raised by the Internet have no locks on their hearts and bedrooms. This drives baby boomers, who'd previously owned the market on narcissism, into a fitful frenzy. Kids dropping their own names instead of dropping acid? How wrong.

One aspect of our national character might, however, benefit from all this self-absorption: It could be making us a nation of artists. Oversharing, after all, is often the soul of creative expression. In the performing arts, the willingness to violate propriety and open up the self can make the difference between an admirable effort and one that blows people away.

Two new pop releases illustrate the benefits of well-wrought oversharing. Evil Urges is the fifth studio album from the Kentucky-bred rock band My Morning Jacket. I Know You're Married but I've Got Feelings Too is the second from the Canadian American singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright. On the surface, these albums have little in common. But they both risk an emotional and sonic forcefulness that doesn't quite fit in with the well-managed poses many pop stars strike today. And they're both fantastic.

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