I was mucking about various music review websites and magazines, and came across an intriguing comment made about female musicians and the strong empathy found in many records.

Urged to weed my way through the obnoxiously large music collection I have and listen to the beauty that is the female voice, I became inspired.

I discovered something I hadn’t before: I feel quite differently about female musicians than I do about males. Not better per se, but differently. There is something rather spectacular about a woman that creates a beauty in music so incredibly mind-numbing it renders us all paralytic. Perhaps it is in the voice, or maybe it’s something else; however, I know of three women who have this power over me.

So I begin with a beauty that hails from the great community of Iceland, the ever-warm Emiliana Torrini. A woman with a sweetness embedded in her voice that turns us all back into our wondrous and innocent selves at the age of 6. This is the glorious effect Ms. Torrini has on me.

My chest flutters and I feel my skin crawl with simplistic yet wonderful chord changes amongst the sputtered string arrangements and the occasional obscurity in the stories she tells. Her record, “Me and Armini,” is a thing of ponderous complexity, yet it holds the power of a million tearful apologies. The way you feel when someone sincerely tells you, “I’m sorry” is the feeling you get when she begins singing. You become immobile with a flood of hazy-eyed sympathy with a hint of guilt that you are harboring this all to yourself, and surely it should be projected across the world.

I must mention the fragile and superhuman beauty cemented inside the dream that is the song “Beggar’s Prayer.” I feel humbled to sum up the striking emotion in this song. The slow chord repetitions alongside her child-like voice will lift you up out of your body and reform you into the person you always wanted to be. This song and I are in love, and we are very happy together.

I continue to gush with the wholesome voice of Lisa Hannigan. This siren comes to us from Ireland. The former back-up singer for fellow Irishman Damien Rice has finally created her own piece of wonder in her album “Sea Sew,” and has proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that she is in no need of the superstar any longer.

Hannigan has a unique, scratchy sort of sound to her voice that seems to be the fear of other, more corporatized musicians. It creates with it a sense of wonder, a curiosity and admiration, and you come to realize you can’t help but fall undyingly in love with her. Her song  “Lille,” a thing of wonder, is the closing track on the record and with no question would stand on its own if needed be. I have come to realize, if given the opportunity, this song would create an unequivocal love in the world that would certainly end every war. Please, please may she bear children, for my heart will break if her brilliance perishes with her.

Alas, I end with the splendor of Joanna Newsom. I have spent my entire life searching for a sound such as this. This woman has spurred more in me than any single thing ever has. Her brilliance is something that has never existed, and may never again. This is it folks, this is what perfect is and the only thing it will ever be.

This is pure love, breathtaking and murderous at times. For such a small woman, she has the voice of a god; with the look of her, there is not much room for much else. However, there is no need for there to be, for surely, this voice possesses the power to give life; and to take it away. Joanna — I speak as though I know her — pecks away on her harp sparking little goose bumps all over my arms and legs, and my heart skips a beat.

Her record “Ys” will, in fact, be the end of me. It contains simplistic pieces of the answer to life inside 10-minute arrangements telling stories of meteors and children within a politically-frightening world. I do so wish I could find someone to love that matches the admiration and love for the beauty in this music; then my life would become something beyond anything I have ever been capable to dream of.

There are countless men who write music just as striking. However the tantalizing empathy innate in a female’s point of view is undeniably unmatched by anyone with a Y chromosome.

I would recommend you not operate machinery while listening due to the frequent attacks on your brain.