Jones could also have coasted after the enormous success of her official debut album, 2002’s Come Away with Me, which ultimately sold over 25 million copies and won five Grammys for Jones (and one for Harris who wrote the album’s iconic single, “Don’t Know Why”). She could have endlessly replicated the Soul/Pop/Jazz template of Come Away with Me and stockpiled hundreds of fortunes, but she followed it with 2004’s Country-flecked Feels Like Home, 2007’s darker and more personal Not Too Late, 2009’s bolder Indie Pop-charged The Fall, 2012’s Danger Mouse-produced lost love diary Little Broken Hearts and last fall’s elegant Day Breaks, which was a return to a Jazz/Pop structure.
That range would have been enough for most artists, but Jones is not most artists. She’s also formed two AltCountry bands, The Little Willies and Puss n Boots, and a Rock band, El Madmo, recorded a set of Everly Brothers covers with Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong and worked with an impossible array of other collaborators, including Foo Fighters, Keith Richards, Mike Patton, Ryan Adams, Herbie Hancock and Seth MacFarlane.
As a result, Jones has sold more than 50 million albums globally, won nine Grammy awards and was named the top Jazz artist of the first decade of the new millennium by Billboard. There isn’t anything Norah Jones can’t do musically, and more importantly, she is unconcerned about tarnishing her reputation by leaving her comfort zone and taking risks. And that’s the mark of a true artist.
