Tunes in my head
I have previously professed my love for Maria McKee in this forum. A mid-'80s album from her days as the lead singer of Lone Justice is still in my regular CD rotation. Her new album just came out this month. She performed earlier this week on the Tonight Show. She was awful. She had a much better voice when she was a blonde.

And then, I noticed in the It's-Stalking-Me ad above an offer to buy a CD of children's music by Nicolette Larson. (The name was misspelled Nicholette, but, oh well.) For reasons that were known only to my 11-year-old head, I had tremendous crushes on Nicolette Larson and Melissa Manchester in the late 1970s. Larson was kind of a one-hit wonder -- "Lotta Love," a song written by Neil Young, made some top-40 noise in 1978 -- but she had hair down to here and an intriguing voice to boot. Plus, I really liked the name "Nicolette" for some reason. Most boys my age at that time were pinning up posters of Farrah Fawcett and Daisy Duke and Suzanne Somers. Me, I had album covers of Nicolette Larson and Melissa Manchester.

Because I was curious, I decided to follow the links to see what became of Nicolette Larson. Imagine my shock to learn she died five years ago. Died of a cerebral edema at 45, leaving behind a daughter who's now 13 and a husband. And her one hit.