CAN I KEEP HIM?

Vocalist Anja Garbarek (b. 1970) is, you guessed it, a daughter of the internationally praised Norwegian jazz composer and saxophonist Jan Garbarek. She has released five albums between 1992 and 2018. In fact I wasn't familiar with her music, so my newcomer review is only about this particular song taken from the fourth album Briefly Shaking (2005). It was featured in Luc Besson's romantic fantasy drama Angel-A which contains music from her albums as well as several new songs composed specifically for the film. The beautiful black & white music video starts with a feather flying (a rip-off from the movie Forrest Gump!) nearby the Eiffel tower where the cute blonde Anja is first seen, posing seductively to the camera and miming the song during her slow walk in Paris.

According to the PA album review "the best songs here are those more pastoral songs. The catchy songs are very commercial, but not that good", so undoubtedly this is among the better ones then. 'Can I Keep Him?' is downright soft and sensitive, concerning both Anja's feather-light vocal delivery and the elegant arrangement that uses strings alongside the usual pop instruments and programming. Pretty, romantic, sugar-sweet, easy on the ears, but not much more than that, and to be honest, not enough evidence to make me form an opinion of Anja Garbarek as a great singer. Two songs I came to think of as stylistic references are TORI AMOS' 'Sleeps With Butterflies' (also from 2005) and JANE SIBERRY's 'Love Is Everything' (1993), but both of them are stronger as compositions -- even if I wouldn't count either of them among the finest songs of the artist in question. However, I believe that on the romantic film (which I haven't seen) 'Can I Keep Him?' succeeds to move the audience.