Meet Ezra Furman
Hour of My Deepest Need
by Maddalena
Photo courtesy of Chiara Ceccaioni.
SHAZAM is the best invention of the 21st Century
TV Music directors are the best disc jockeys ever. Today, when I watch one of those more obscure Netflix shows that I usually can’t discuss with anyone, like Sex Education, I have the remote in one hand and the SHAZAM in the other. It’s so much better than back in my youth when you had to call the TV station to ask, what the heck is that song? Like we did when the unknown Grace Potter and the Nocturnals got that little role on All My Children as a house band in one episode and we all went nuts over them.
Back to Sex Education. This show is about teenagers exploring their sexuality in every form you can imagine, from LGBTQ to nonbinary and everything in between. It’s not for the sexually squeamish or right wingnuts among us. I loved the show. From the first song snippet, I grabbed the SHAZAM. I knew I would hit musical gold here. I found my first transgender singer/songwriter crush on this show. No, that’s not right either, because in 2006, I was madly in musical love with Zoe/Zarf, the male rock star transitioning to female in that epic All My Children story line. But I digress, which I’m very good at, by the way.
EZRA’s musical genders sure transcend
I heard the first few words of this song in one of the episodes. SHAZAM tells me it’s a song called Hour of My Deepest Need by Ezra Furman. The voice is phenomenal, unique, gritty but smoothly soft at the same time. My ears ask me, is that a boy or a girl voice? I find the singer. I find Ezra Furman, a 36 year old Jewish, transgender woman and mother who is now studying to be a rabbi. Ezra started out with his/her band, the Harpoons in 2007, releasing three albums. Then went solo and released six more.
In 2020, Ezra did the soundtrack for Sex Education. Oddly, my favorite song didn’t make it onto the soundtrack. Who produced that thing? It appears, instead, on Ezra’s 2015 album, Perpetual Motion People. The lyrics in this song are simple and masterful and oh so beautiful. The wistful longing and purity of hope of finding someone to connect with who gets you, pours out of every syllable and note of this song. The pain often caused by that quest bleeds through the chorus: Sometimes your wound is powerful and deep. Sometimes you just gotta let that sucker bleed. When the night drags in the day, you’ll be a thousand miles away, in the hour of my deepest need. The piano played at those tinkly, twinkly high notes is just so pretty against the guitar and those brushed drums. Sorry, I’m not a musician, that’s the best I can do with that description.
No prejudices against this gorgeous song by this gorgeous songbird
Look, I have no idea why almost 20 years since we broke transgender barriers on the most mainstream of TV, the soap opera, we are still obsessed with obsessing over people’s private parts. I have all I can do to figure out what to do with my own. Why this country just can’t collectively mind their own damn business is beyond me. There have been transgenders and cross dressers and drag queens since time immemorial. Don’t we have more important stuff to worry about these days?
Anyway, I LOVE Ezra; the story, the uniquely sensational voice, a perfect mix of boy and girl actually and the so very cool, heartfelt lyrics. Check out Ezra’s beautiful Instagram post on coming out as a transgender woman and mom and what that means for someone in today’s society. Check out the soundtrack to Sex Education and the show. In the meantime, check out my favorite Ezra song, Hour of My Deepest Need, right here. This is a molecule moving song, my friends!