Don’t Be a One-Hit Wonder
The first time I heard What’s Up? by 4 Non Blondes, I was elbow-deep in a bucket of raw shrimp. It was a month before I started high school, and I’d been slaving away all summer fileting fish and peeling shrimp in the sweltering kitchen of a local seaside crab shack. It was a thankless job that left my hands both stinging and stinking.
And I loved it.
There was safety in it, I was good at it, and people left me alone – likely because I spent most of my days covered in mullet guts. Regardless, it was just me, my work, and a tiny portable radio that sat atop a nearby refrigerator, softly coughing out Top 40 drivel. But then, it happened. From amid all the pop fluff arose the anti-pop voice of Linda Perry, the 4 Non Blondes frontwoman. She seamlessly went back and forth from a deep, brooding register to an eerily pleasing meadowlark warble.