Crying Game

Up until Tuesday, there were only two times music has made me cry: Vladimir Horowitz's historic and emotion-filled Moscow concerts, when he returned to his homeland after decades being exiled from it, and Aaron Neville's version of "Ave Maria," my late mother-in-law's favorite song.

Now there's a third: when Aretha Franklin sang "My Country 'Tis Of Thee" at Barack Obama's inauguration. She hit the first few notes and the tears just started rolling down my cheeks. What that must have meant to her, growing up in a segregated Detroit, to be singing at the presidential inauguration of a black man. What that must have meant to her, to be invited to be a part of the ceremony at all.

Like Horowitz, whose performance was technically no better than competent, but whose performance was so emotional it overcame any technical flaws, the Queen of Soul was not in her best voice. (She later said the cold weather had affected her performance.) Her voice might not have been what it once was, but there was nothing wrong with her heart, and she was singing from her heart and nowhere else.

I'll take emotion over technical competence any time.