Tears — tears all the way through watching Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill, the documentary about the truly great singer-songwriter who released two of the greatest albums of the 1970s but died young in obscurity when the albums just didn’t sell.
I was one of the relative handful of people who “got” Judee Sill instantly. I sat enraptured listening to Judee Sill in the studio of my college radio station and was able to repeat the experience many years later when I finally heard Heart Food, which had somehow escaped even my attention.
Sill is at the top of my “you have got to hear this” list of artists who didn’t get the attention they deserved when their brilliant work was first released into the wild. I have sung her praises for more than 50 years. Her songs are always interesting, and a few of them — “The Lamb Ran Away with the Crown,” “Lady-O,” “The Kiss,” and “The Donor” for example — cross the line into unspeakable, unmatchable beauty.
“She had more musical chops than any of the people on the scene except for Brian Wilson,” Linda Ronstadt says early on in the 2022 film, which at last is available for rent or purchase on Apple TV and Prime Video, and that puts the finger on why loving Judee Sill’s music has been so frustrating: She really does belong to be mentioned with Wilson among the greatest modern singer-songwriters, but it’s only in the latest 20 years that it’s finally begun to happen, 45 years after she died.
To hear Ronstadt, Shawn Colvin and so many other talented people talk about Sill’s gift is so affirming, and to hear people finally discovering her genius is so bittersweet.
She was a hard person to like sometimes, and self-destructive, which probably contributed to the lack of attention. The film is sad and illustrates how she was her own worst enemy, but it’s ultimately triumphant because it allows her music to shine at last.
