Elton John idolised her and she wrote hits for the likes of Barbra Streisand, but her musical ambitions were out of sync with the times. Now a new collection reveals her intense originality in full
Whatever role Laura Nyro chose to play – earth mother, soul sister, angel of the Bronx subways – she committed to it. With a soaring, open-hearted voice and ingeniously crafted compositions, Nyro transformed a range of influences into her own kind of art song. She made vertiginous shifts from hushed reveries to ecstatic gospel-driven shout-ups with an intensity and a courage that, as Elton John would point out, left its mark on many contemporaries who achieved greater commercial success.
As the music of the 1960s reached a climax, no one else merged the new songwriting freedoms pioneered by Bob Dylan with the pop sensibility of the Brill Building tunesmiths to such intriguing effect. As a teenager, she wrote And When I Die and Stoney End, songs that became hits for other artists. Her own enigmatically titled albums – Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, New York Tendaberry, Christmas and the Beads of Sweat – showed a precociously sophisticated sensibility.
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