Keri Noble

For a few reasons -- all of them superficial -- Keri Noble has been compared to Norah Jones at times. Both of them are romantic, piano-playing singer/songwriters who were in their twenties in the early 2000s, and both of them have ties to veteran producer Arif Mardin; he produced Jones' smash Come Away With Me album, and Mardin is one of the executive producers on Noble's debut album, Fearless. But stylistically, Noble and Jones are very different artists -- and truth be told, Noble has much more in common with Sarah McLachlan, Paula Cole, or former October Project singer Mary Fahl. Jones brings a definite jazz influence to the table; she isn't a jazz singer per se, but is a pop singer who has been affected by jazz, cabaret, Tin Pan Alley, and torch singing. Noble, however, is coming from more of an adult alternative perspective; where Fearless is concerned, McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy is a much better comparison than Come Away With Me. And while Jones tends to be romantically comforting, Noble's introspective, vulnerable lyrics can be dark at times -- lyrically and melodically, Fearless is not a terribly happy or cheerful album. Although Fearless has a secular orientation, Noble grew up listening to mostly Christian music. Born in Ft. Worth, TX, in 1977 and raised in Detroit, Noble is the daughter of a Protestant minister. Noble's father was born and raised in Peru before immigrating to the United States; while the vast majority of Latinos are Catholic, Noble's dad was the pastor of a Spanish-speaking Baptist church in the southwestern part of the Motor City. Meanwhile, Noble's mother also had a Christian outlook and taught Spanish at one of Detroit's Protestant high schools. Noble attended a Protestant high school herself, but despite her Christian...