What makes a Marianne Faithfull song great is something an artist can’t buy or learn: It’s the sound of experience. Faithfull’s most haunting (and haunted) quality as an artist was the raspy world weariness in her voice and phrasing, the sense that this elegant woman — who died today at the age of 78 — had seen things, good and bad, and had the wisdom to show for it, even as an angelic 17-year-old girl singing “As Tears Go By.” That 1964 song, her first hit (written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards), was recorded when she was just 17, but its mood set the tone for the rest
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