50 Greatest Arts Videos

Oof. This is awesome but, be warned, it will eat your day, so be sure you’ve time to spare before you go clicking.

Here’s the entry for the above clip, Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit:

“Apparently Holiday used to break down every time after singing ‘Strange Fruit’. Seeing her perform it here (five months before her death), with that agonising, cracked voice of hers, you understand why. She invests so much in it. Based on a poem about the lynching of two black men in the American South (‘strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees…’) the song, which she originally recorded in 1939, went on to become her biggest hit.”

If that’s all a bit high-brow (I’m talking the bits on Zeffirelli’s Tosca and Vladimir Nabokov rather than The Beatles and Barbra Streisand) then pop along to David McCarthy’s videogame-themed Best of YouTube article (it’s a couple of years old but still awesome) for some game-related stuff instead.

Writing, not Youtube, will follow later this week, I promise it.

(First seen via Mr Blackett)