Review 1341

I have to say I was pretty impressed when I first
arrived at “Charlotte”. It was definatley not what I
expected it to be.

This website belongs to musician/singer Charlotte
Martin, an Illinois native who graduated from college
with a degree in opera. Instead of becoming an opera
singer she decided to write and perform music.
According to the “bio” section of her site, what sets
her apart from her peers is the; “candor in her songs
and her willingness to not take herself to seriously”.
If you go to the “see/hear” section of this site you
can listen to a handfull of her songs and read the
lyrics as well. My favorite would have to be “Raven”,
the piano and singing are just fantastic, and the
lyrics definatley have you thinking. I didn’t find a
song here that I didn’t like. This is really great
stuff!

There are a couple sections of this site that stand
out as well. A cartoon secion and a section called
“word tree”, I don’t even know what a word tree is but
I kind of found it fascinating. There’s an active
message board, a place where you can go to see where
Charlotte is performing, and even a store where you
can purchase a cd, which I made ad is fairly cheap.
Definatly worth the money I think.

The site is designed superbly, easy to navigate, no
broken links, a professional job to say the
least.

Unfortunatly though, this is not the “design review”
or the “music review”. You can find Charlotte’s blog
posts under the “news” section. There are some posts
of a personal nature, but most of them are where she
will be performing. I counted nine posts, and was
unable to find any archives, which I really would have
found interesting. I have never read a musicians
weblog before and it would have been fascinating to
read what its like to be on the road and performing. I
noticed that a couple posts were by someone else as
well who runs the site. Had it not been for the music,
lyrics, and word tree, I probably would have not put
this in the personal category, and maybe into the
music category.

I’m giving “Charlotte” a 2 because of the limited
amount of posts and no archives. I never really felt
that I knew the author, the bio section although
informative, was written by someone else so that
didn’t help me make a connection. Perhaps if I were
reviewing for Rolling Stone or Spin I could give out a
higher score but Charlotte Martin’s site just barely
fits the criteria of what most would consider a
weblog. The music is great, and the site has
potential, but its not a very good weblog. Two stars,
check out the cool music.
charlotte