| The Girl in the Other Room | ||||
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| Studio album by Diana Krall | ||||
| Released | April 27, 2004 | |||
| Recorded | 2003-04 | |||
| Genre | Jazz, Pop music | |||
| Length | 55:36 | |||
| Label | The Verve Music Group | |||
| Producer | Tommy LiPuma Diana Krall |
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| Diana Krall chronology | ||||
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| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | [1] |
The Girl in the Other Room is the eighth album by jazz singer and pianist Diana Krall. For the first time, she performs songs that she co-wrote with her husband Elvis Costello. The album has already gone top 5 in the UK and debuted high on the Billboard 200 in May 2004. Billboard ranked album at number 7 on the magazine's Top Jazz Albums of the Decade.
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Diana Krall wrote some of the songs for the album with Elvis Costello. Krall told USA Today that she had wanted to try songwriting before but lacked the confidence. "I started writing when I was a student but didn't really have the confidence to (pursue) lyric-writing in great depth. I've never done anything so personal."
On the Verve Records website, Diana Krall explains the songwriting for the album in more detail. "Musically composed by Krall alone, these songs mark a lyrical collaboration with her new husband, Elvis Costello. Explaining how they worked, Krall said: "I wrote the music and then Elvis and I talked about what we wanted to say. I told him stories and wrote pages and pages of reminiscences, descriptions and images, and he put them into tighter lyrical form. For "Departure Bay," I wrote down a list of things that I love about home, things I realized were different, even exotic, now that I've been away".
"Departure Bay" is written about her hometown Nanaimo, British Columbia on Vancouver Island and the first Christmas without her mother and finishes the album. The penultimate song on the album "I'm Coming Through" is also about the death of her mother.
As well as the songs she co-wrote with Elvis Costello, Krall departs from the standards she has sung on previous albums by performing songs by contemporary performers such as Costello, Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell as well as a Chris Smither song previously performed by Bonnie Raitt. She also performs Mose Allison's "Stop This World".
The album reached the Top 5 in the UK, the Australian top 40 album charts and made a strong debut on the Billboard 200. "Temptation", a cover of the Tom Waits song off his Frank's Wild Years album of 1987 has reached number 1 of the World Jazz Charts (based on the US, Germany, France, Japan and China) and reached the US Top 40 on the pop charts.
| Chart (2004) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Billboard 200 | 4 |
| Polish Albums Chart[2] | 1 |
| Top Canadian Albums | 1 |
| Top Jazz Albums | 1 |
| Country | Certification | Sales/shipments |
|---|---|---|
| Canada | 2x Platinum[3] | 160,000 |
| United States | Gold | 500,000 |
| Preceded by Wideoteka by Jeden Osiem L |
Polish Albums Chart number-one album May 4, 2004 - May 10, 2004 |
Succeeded by Kabaret TEY Vol. 2: Ciąg dalszy by Kabaret TEY |
| Preceded by Come Away with Me by Norah Jones |
U.S. Billboard Top Jazz Albums number-one album May 15, 2004 – July 31, 2004 |
Succeeded by Come Away with Me by Norah Jones |