7/20/22: American jazz singer Melody Gardot only recently came to my attention, and I’m positively obsessed. Her performance career came to her the hard way. The singer was in a near-fatal bicycle accident in her late teens. Music played a key role in her recovery from her injuries, which inspired her to become a life-long advocate of music therapy. Gadot even taught herself to play guitar on her back because for the first year after her accident, sitting up was too painful. Her first album was recorded from her sickbed.
Gardot doesn’t wear her signature sunglasses because she’s cool. They are to help with her post-accident hypersensitivity to light. She’s super-sensitive to sound as well, which is maybe why her music is so smooth and lush.
“I picked the most unusual path. I have a hard time with light and a hard time with sound and I sit on the stage almost every night with a lot of noise and a lot of light!”
You can follow Melody Gardot on her website and on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
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My OBT 
June 7, 2026 at 7:04 am
We’ve seen Melody Gardot live twice, both times in London but had very different experiences – the first time was in 2008 when she appeared at a small and intimate venue in Bloomsbury. The show was absolutely wonderful and I loved it so much I even bought her debut album, ‘Worrisome Heart’, at the end before going home. The second time we saw her was several years later in a huge venue on London’s South Bank, which I had really been looking forward to but to be honest it was all a bit of a disappointment. She kept us all waiting far too long (already seated in the auditorium) without any explanation as to why there was a delay, and the show eventually started a full hour and a half late, so as a result most of the audience (including us) had to leave long before the end in order to catch the last tube home. London Transport simply doesn’t accommodate the whim of diva musicians, whatever their ongoing health issues… She does have a lovely voice though 🙂
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