Paris Jackson performed on Sunday, September 6, at the Oklahoma festival Rocklahoma, and won over the audience with a cover of "No Rain" from Blind Melon's debut album. In fan footage shared on social media, she first folded a paper airplane and sent it into the crowd, then fully focused on the song, dancing and singing. American Songwriter ↗ It was the closing day of the festival's milestone twentieth edition, headlined this year by Godsmack, Papa Roach, and Slayer. Consequence ↗
The performance came less than three weeks after the late Michael Jackson's daughter released her second studio album, Happiest Day of My Life. Shortly afterward, she added two more songs, "The Breeze" and "Just Me and You." In an interview with Zane Lowe of Apple Music, she said she was proud of the double single — proud of maturing both as a producer and as a songwriter, and that in making it she told herself "to hell with the rules": the first song has no chorus or bridge and is more of a spoken letter, while the second has verses, a chorus, and an unusual instrumental piece at the end. "It's not a tribute. It's not a memorial. It's not any kind of demonstration. It's a letter. It's a poem of the sonic kind," she explained in a statement. American Songwriter ↗
The choice of cover is interesting in its own right. "No Rain" was released as a single in 1993 and is one of those '90s songs that outgrew its band. Blind Melon's original singer, Shannon Hoon, died of an overdose in the band's tour bus in New Orleans on October 21, 1995, and the band went quiet for four years, but the song — with its buzzing guitar riff and its video featuring a little girl in a bee costume — remains in circulation to this day.
So Paris Jackson didn't choose one of her father's hits, but rather a song from a completely different world than the one the family name comes from — from alternative rock, which at the time stood in opposition to the pop mainstream represented precisely by Michael Jackson. Chords and lyrics for "No Rain" can be found on SuperMusic.cz.
Illustrative photo: Paris Jackson in 2021. Photo: Kadri Koop / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
Paris Jackson Surprised the Crowd at Rocklahoma with a Cover of Blind Melon's No Rain
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