Musings on Missing Music Metadata

How's that for an alliterative headline?

I purchased the new Diana Krall album, The Girl In The Other Room, yesterday from the iTunes Music Store. It's a fine album - while I will admit to having thought that her marriage to Elvis Costello seemed really bizarre at the time (I even wrote about it then, and wished that she would record Costello's Almost Blue, which she does on this one - maybe she reads my blog), the songs they have written together on this album are some of the best things he's written in years, and she is a wonderful interpreter of his moody but literate style, imbuing it with needed subtlety and swing.

Krall has used a small collection of wonderful musicians on this recording, including John Clayton and Christian McBride on bass, and Peter Erskine, Teri Lyne Carrington, and Jeff Hamilton on drums. As I'm listening, I think - gee, I'd really like to know who's playing on which cuts. But that information is not to be found. Not in iTMS, not in the Credits section of the album's entry in the All Music Guide, not on her own web site.

I guess that's what you pay the extra $10 for when you get the CD. Sheesh.