With her new, scaled-back style, the New Jersey singer-songwriter proves that she can strip away the frills and still make us feel all of the emotions.
When James McBride, a National Book Award winner for his fiction, decided to write an entire book about James Brown, he wanted to push beyond the hype and racism he says haunts Brown's legacy.
"All my songs are personal on some level; it's just a matter of how much that personal thing is buried." Bird says that on the new album Are You Serious, his private world has bubbled to the surface.