From now on, Wednesday posts on The Lost Songs Project will cover fantastic singles that either charted low or failed to chart altogether. It’s time to give them their due!
Peak: Didn’t chart in the United States (but it did reach #33 in England)
Streams: 3.7 million
Joan Osborne’s record company really believed in “St. Teresa.” They released it to alternative radio as a teaser track for her breakthrough album Relish, and then after “One of Us” became a huge hit, they promoted it as a proper single. There were two music videos. There was this magnificent performance on David Letterman’s show.
And the song merited this attention! It still does. As it tells the story of a prostitute selling drugs to care her for child, “St. Teresa” has an ear-grabbing urgency. The insistent mandolin line, the nervous drums, and the organ solo combine to create a sensual, beckoning sound, like the music needs to show us something astonishing right this very minute.
Osborne’s voice does the rest. She croons the verses — caresses them, really. I always feel like she’s inviting me to listen to her, not forcing me. But when she gets to the bridge, she unleashes a full-on wail, complete with a high note. She sounds ecstatic, which is appropriate for a song replete with religious imagery.
I can hear influences in “St. Teresa,” including R.E.M. and Indigo Girls, but I can’t think of another song that sounds exactly like it. It’s a neat trick, being both accessible and idiosyncratic at once. Credit goes to Osborne and her co-writers, Eric Bazilian, Rob Hyman, and Rick Chertoff. Brazilian and Hyman were in an 80s band called The Hooters, and Chertoff produced hits like Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” I love knowing that they also had a left-field tune like this in them.
If you haven’t heard this song before, then I hope you love it. And if you don’t know Osborne’s music beyond “One Of Us,” then treat yourself today. Listen to songs like “Ladder,” “Hallelujah in the City,” “Righteous Love,” and “Pretty Little Stranger” Every last one of them is the kind of song that makes me want to stand up on my chair to applaud. They all have an astonishing depth of feeling, and they’re also intensely pleasurable. Osborne’s that kind of artist, who can touch your head and your heart at the same time. “St. Teresa” is a perfect entry point to her astonishing oeuvre.
This post had me going to YouTube so fast to listen to Bring Me Some Water with Melissa Etheridge: https://youtu.be/VDDabG8HNFQ?si=jH9xXFOhpeN4QotP.
Thanks for the reminder about this song and the lovely album that featured it. It’s been a long time since I heard this album, at least 25 years probably, I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed it!