Global Hit – Emiliana Torrini

The answer to the Geo Quiz today also takes us to our Global Hit. The Nordic island nation that has suffered terribly as a result of the global economic crisis is Iceland. And Iceland is where this winsome singer-songwriter hails from.

�My name is Emiliana Torrini. I’m from Iceland, but I have an Italian father.�

Emiliana Torrini’s just released album is called “Me and Armini.” Torrini was recently in New York, and performed the title track for us.

A bit of background on the tune first. It’s got a kind of 60s Jamaican rocksteady vibe. The song is about someone obsessed with a fictitious person named Armini…

…we think.

Because as Emiliana told me, she doesn’t actually remember writing the song with Dan Carey, her bass player.

�I was in the studio with Dan, and decided to just have a little bit of a chill-out in the evening, and jam together. And had a bit of whiskey. Then I don’t really remember anything else except three days later, or a week or so, I wanted to have another song on the record, and Dan mentions this track, “Me and Armini,” and I have no idea what he’s talking about. But he showed it to me and, yeah, really liked it. The song is kind of a stalker song, and we had this theory that the woman who’s stalking Armini died and her spirit went into my whiskey. And she took over my body and wrote him this song, and we’re just praying for Armini out there somewhere. (LAUGHS)�

Emiliana Torrini with the title track from her new CD.

It’s called “Me and Armini.”

Thanks to WFUV in New York for engineering that performance for us.