One of the best singers you probably aren't listening to...

My musical tastes are pretty diverse, as evidenced by the 20,000+ songs that reside on my iPod. (Yes, I have the only iPod Apple makes that's big enough to accommodate all of my music—no Nano for me!) I've decided periodically to share with you some music you might not otherwise have heard of.

Although I listen to nearly every style of music, I find myself gravitating toward the singer/songwriter genre quite often. (And what I've found is that there are a lot of singer/songwriters named Jason, Matt, and Matthew—it's pretty amazing!) And one of my favorite singers for the last 18 months or so is Ron Pope. I first heard Ron's music on, of all things, So You Think You Can Dance, as a contestant a few seasons ago used his song Fireflies for a solo dance. While the lyrics of this song captivated me, it's his gravelly, soulful, expressive voice that hooked me, so I found myself needing to hear more of his music. (Below is a live video of Ron singing that song.)



The more I've listened to Ron's music, the more I love the moods his music evokes, as well as the complexity of his voice and the poetry of some of his lyrics. This song, A Drop in the Ocean, apparently was used by the television show Vampire Diaries. (Javier Colon, winner of the first season of The Voice, covered this song as his first single as well. I think he gives a new dimension to the song.)



His latest album, Atlanta, is pretty fantastic. For reasons I can't quite explain, my favorite song from the album is A Wedding in Connecticut, which seems to choke me up half the time I listen to it. (As I've established many a time, I'm a real emotional sap. It is what it is.)



And because I know you probably can't get away from this song, Ron also covered Gotye's Somebody That I Used to Know a while back, without the contributions from Kimbra. I'm a huge fan of the song, and I thought his version is really good as well.



If you've heard of Ron Pope before, hopefully you agree with my assessment that he's pretty fantastic. And if not, and you like this genre of music, I'd definitely encourage you to give him a try. You won't regret it.