Holy Roller: Joan Osborne

A dozen male models in Mylar shorts is not what Joan Osborne asked for from life, but she’ll make do on this cloudy Liverpool morning. Once again she’s about to perform her Grammy-nominated hit single “One of Us,” this time for the kind of television talk show that features muscle-bound models to illustrate why more English women are watching soccer matches these days. The lads shiver as they trot from the studio’s balcony-level waiting room to the taping area below. Osborne flirts with the hunks, shimmying a little as she walks by them in her Ann-Margret Viva Las Vegas dress. As guitarists Erik Della Penna and Jack Petruzzelli tune up with a medley of “One of Us” and Yes’ “Roundabout,” the models return, their work completed, and make a beeline for several platters full of cheese-and-chutney sandwiches.

In makeup for her three-minute performance (“shorter than the version we did for Good Morning America“), Osborne looks like an angelic caricature of herself. Her hair is a cloud and her lips a waterlily, the way she appears in the video for “One of Us.” The shorts boys, lured by the music but caught now by Osborne’s charm, nibble their sandwiches and stare. Usually adorned with just a little lip gloss, Osborne’s Irish-German-Italian face is beautifully off-kilter: wide cheeks, lopsided mouth, proud nose, dimples. The corkscrew hair that’s become a trademark is often tied back, and sometimes her nose ring leaves her skin slightly inflamed. She copes with these imperfections as best she can. Her vegetarian diet keeps her body in miniskirt shape, but she doesn’t struggle to be skinny; she’s proud enough of her curves to have called the independent record label that she started Womanly Hips Music.

For years, Osborne wondered if her anti-model persona would hurt her chances for mainstream success. “I always thought that it was going to hold me back,” she says. “I never looked like what a successful rock person is supposed to look like: a skinny chick with a lot of black eye-makeup.” She compares herself to Blues Traveler’s corpulent leader, John Popper, but Osborne is more a ringer for Sarah Jessica Parker than Popper is for Brad Pitt. Her remark merely illustrates how much more restrictive beauty’s rules for women remain.

At any rate, Osborne prefers funkiness to glamour. “A friend of mine works at Armani, and I got a message that he wanted to dress me for the Grammys,” she says with a chuckle. “I think I’d feel more comfortable being dressed by Urban Outfitters.”

London could be any stop along the road tonight, its avenues slipping by as the blue van carrying Osborne and her band hurtles toward another hotel. Osborne will not see daylight in this city; she’s on a whistle-stop promotional tour and heads to Paris before breakfast tomorrow. But she’ll be back, and Della Penna and Petruzzelli pester the driver about where to find cool shoes, rare vinyl and tasty curry. Ignoring them, Osborne wraps her coat tighter and tries to relax. The idle chatter continues, and in the midst of a long-winded story, somebody mentions Al Green. Osborne stirs, mutters, “I love his songs,” and leads herself into one: She almost whispers at first, then stresses the backbeat harder as she finds the rhythm. “I’m so tired of being alone/I’m so tired off on my own/Won’t you help me girl just as soon as you ca-a-a-n, ” she murmurs, stretching the long notes for effect. She’s a little raw, but her voice wraps a shimmery thread around Green’s familiar phrases. Osborne is making an enchanted circle, and eventually it overtakes the group; people fall quiet and listen. Nobody sings along, because nobody could match her. Anyway, she’s not in London anymore. Staring out the window at Elizabethan storefronts, Osborne is in a Memphis of her own design, throwing down with Al, reaching for the high notes.