Posts Tagged ‘Barbra Streisand’

CHART ATTACK!: 10/11/80

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Hi everyone! It’s Friday and it’s time to look back at another Billboard Top 10 from — holy crap, this is from 29 years ago. Anybody else feel really old? Thankfully, I think this is a pretty good week for the charts: good variety, strong songs all around, and some really fantastic videos. Join me, won’t you, as we take a stab at October 11, 1980!

10. Give Me the Night — George Benson null
9. Real Love — The Doobie Brothers null
8. Xanadu — Olivia Newton-John/Electric Light Orchestra null
7. I’m Alright — Kenny Loggins null
6. Late in the Evening — Paul Simon null
5. Drivin’ My Life Away — Eddie Rabbitt null
4. All Out of Love — Air Supply null
3. Upside Down — Diana Ross null
2. Woman in Love — Barbra Streisand null
1. Another One Bites the Dust — Queen null

10. Give Me the Night — George Benson (download)

George Benson on roller skates, y’all. Does it get any better?

If you feel like this song’s groove sounds vaguely familiar, it’s probably because it was written by Rod Temperton, former keyboardist for Heatwave, and the man behind much of Off the Wall (and, later, Thriller). Every time I hear a Rod Temperton jam, I’m once again astounded that sounds like this came from a white guy. “Give Me the Night” peaked at #4, making it Benson’s most successful hit, with the awesome, awesome “Turn Your Love Around” right behind it, peaking at #5 in 1981. I’m disappointed that “Lady Love Me (One More Time) only made it to #30. I don’t have much more to say about this song — I’m too busy groovin’.

9. Real Love — The Doobie Brothers

If you buy the Michael McDonald: The Ultimate Collection CD (and you should!) and you import it into iTunes, there’s a good chance that the song titles for the Doobie Brothers tracks will come up like this: “Real Love (ft. The Doobie Brothers).” Now, on one hand, that’s incorrect: these tracks, and others like it, were released under “The Doobie Brothers,” and changing it is akin to changing “Lennon/McCartney” to “McCartney/Lennon.” (Okay, it’s nothing like that, but I just wanted to compare the Doobies to the Beatles for a second.) But in all honesty, these are Michael McDonald tracks featuring the Doobie Brothers. Other than keeping the album as a consistent “Michael McDonald” album, I’m not sure what the reason was for this alteration, other than McD just trying to find one more way to piss off Jeff “Skunk” Baxter. And if that’s the case — bravo, McD! I thought you ran out of ways to irritate Skunk a long time ago. Of course, Baxter was out of the band by the time both this song — and its accompanying album, One Step Closer — were released, and the band was nearing dissolution anyway due to the increased friction that came from essentially being McD’s backing band. Still, “Real Love” is a great song from this era of the Doobies. It’s no “What a Fool Believes” or “Minute By Minute,” but it’s got plenty of soul and a typically great vocal by McD.

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Soundtrack Saturday: “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar”

I was saddened when I learned earlier this week that Patrick Swayze had died, after losing a hard-fought battle against pancreatic cancer. I knew there’d been at least one false report of his death since he announced his illness last year, so I was skeptical when I saw the first tweet about his passing from one of the news feeds I follow on Twitter. My heart sank when reputable news outlets started to report that his publicist had indeed announced his death. I knew it was going to happen soon, but it doesn’t make me any less sad to see another icon from my childhood suddenly gone.

The moment I learned of Swayze’s death, I knew this week’s column would have to center on one of his films, and I didn’t even give a second thought to which one — it had to be To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995). I’m sure many of you would prefer that I’d dug up the soundtrack to Road House (1989) or Point Break (1991) — and I still might some day — but as passionate as some of you are about those cult classics, I have equally strong feelings about this little movie and Swayze’s performance in it. Before you laugh, hear me out.

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Unsolicited Career Advice for … Barry Gibb

For all the correspondence from Uncle Donnie that we have on record (or in piles in Lev’s basement), it’s worth noting that he could, on occasion, fall out of touch with people.  The trick was to reconnect with those folks before they died.  Barry Gibb was one of the fortunate ones. -RS

TO: Barry Gibb
FROM: Don Skwatzenschitz
RE: Career Advice

Barry, old pal, how have you been?  It’s been so long since we last saw you at your brother Robin’s birthday party in Miami—what was it, five years ago?  Nine?  I don’t remember much about that night, but I do recall thinking the nude caterers were a bit much.  The spinach balls were lovely, though; Mitzi’s been trying to recreate them in our kitchen ever since.  I tell her the nudity had nothing to do with the quality of the food, but she never listens.

Speaking of my beloved, the other night, she was watching repeats of French television (this satellite TV gets damn near everything), and came upon a performance of “To Love Somebody” by a couple singer/songwriter types, and we got into a discussion about you.  You did such a good job on American Idol a couple years back (though I didn’t quite get the Dr. Zaius costume—was that supposed to be ironic?), yet never capitalized on it.  That’s a shame, particularly if you want to have a place at the table in pop culture these days.  With such an enormous back catalog of hits, you should be out there reminding people of your greatness, and getting new fans to bask in that greatness.  I think I can help you, if you take my advice in several key areas: (more…)

CD Review: Vanessa Williams, “The Real Thing”

It’s been more than 25 years since Vanessa Williams was crowned the first black Miss America. But once nude pictures of the former photographer’s assistant were published without her consent in Penthouse magazine in the summer of ‘84, she was forced to relinquish the title. After all this time, the question remains: whatever happened to Bob Guccione?

Williams, of course, bounced back quickly from the scandal, scoring first as a singer with pop-R&B albums like The Right Stuff (1988) and The Comfort Zone (1991), and the hit ballads “Save the Best for Last” and “Colors of the Wind.” She then transitioned into acting, starring on the big screen in Eraser (1996) and Soul Food (1997) and earning a Tony nomination for Into the Woods. Since 2006 she’s played over-the-top villain Wilhelmina Slater on TV’s Ugly Betty, but if the Ritalin-deficient rhythms of that sitcom have you reaching for the remote, you may appreciate the subtler approach of her latest record, The Real Thing (Concord).

It’s Williams’s first album of (mostly) original, non-holiday material since 1997’s Next, and as she says in the liner notes, “My initial musical direction for this Concord CD kept morphing from Brazilian … to torch songs, big band and R&B.” All four styles show up on The Real Thing, along with four different producers, but Williams has the confidence and soft touch necessary to pull it off, not to mention that the album’s overall adult-contemporary sheen smooths out any and all bumps in the road connecting the various genres.

The track that best sums up the LP is a cover of Barbra Streisand’s “Lazy Afternoon” (1975) — The Real Thing is “grown folks’ music” for a do-nothing summer afternoon, something to put on in the background as the clouds drift past and you relax before hosting a dinner party. And guess what? The Real Thing is perfect background music for that occasion too! Ask for it by name at your local Starbucks, hotel bar, and/or smooth-jazz station, but ask gently — Vanessa’s trying to set a mood here, after all.

That’s meant as a compliment. At this point in her career, Williams has nothing left to prove; she can handle being the last thing on your mind as you coordinate table settings or order a latte. So even if the tempo rarely rises above mid- and the temperature remains a safe 98 degrees throughout, she made the album she wanted to make. The restraint pays off with the breezy charm of songs like “Loving You,” a jazzy slow-burner written by Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds and Carole Bayer Sager; the soft-rock track “Just Friends,” another ‘Face composition that also features his backing vocals; and “The Real Thing,” a Latin-flavored Stevie Wonder tune first recorded by Sergio Mendes in 1977. Wonder’s presence is also felt on “October Sky,” a duet with Javier Colon, who invokes the Motown legend’s effortless charisma.

Confidence and charm can’t rescue “I Fell In,” which sounds like it was discovered in a pile of rejected soundtrack ballads from the ’80s, and there’s nothing here that comes close to Williams’s smokin’ 1991 cover of the Isley Brothers’ “Work to Do” — which turned the original’s sexism on its ear — but her creamy vocals elevate even the weakest tracks on The Real Thing. A quarter-century after it looked like she’d become a footnote to pop-culture history, Vanessa Williams has proven she’s the real thing too.

Just Friends
Lazy Afternoon

The Real Thing is available at Amazon.com.

How Bad Can It Be?: “Barbra Streisand: The Concerts”

In the pantheon of queer models of femininity, Barbra Streisand looms large — just below the holy trinity of Judy and Liza and Liz, perhaps. For many gay men of a certain age, La Barbra is something akin to a goddess. I’ve never understood the appeal, myself; but with the 3-DVD set Barbra Streisand: The Concerts sitting on my desk and awaiting review, it’s high time I figure it out. Because let’s face it — we are all products of gay culture now.

If that sounds like paranoid heteroseparatist conspiracy theory — fear the day when our gay overlords (David Geffen and Tim Gunn, most likely) force us all into re-education camps, to be released only when we’ve each written a 3,000-word essay on the greatness of the Pet Shop Boys! — the reality is both more mundane and more complex. The fact is that many of us, both gay and straight, could write our Pet Shop Boys essays already; that’s because traditionally-gay perspectives have been thoroughly co-opted by, and absorbed into, the cultural mainstream.

That influence goes beyond the what of popular culture — beyond the eminence of any individual gay artistic figure, beyond the cultural prominence of any gay-identified genre or artform (disco, say, or musical theater), beyond the dominance by gay people of any particular industry or cultural segment (e.g., fashion), even beyond the traditional role of gay people as cultural tastemakers and gatekeepers — and right to the question of how we interact with that culture. Our default modes of engagement with our entertainments derive fundamentally from gay sensibilities. The ironic distance; the half-sincere appreciation; the insider/outsider divide; the knowing wink; the concepts of camp and kitsch and “so bad it’s good”; all trace back to the gay experience, to the profound division of living simultaneously in two worlds, gay and straight. (more…)

CHART ATTACK!: 1/29/77


Welcome back to another edition of CHART ATTACK!, everybody!  We’re going back a full 32 years this week, and it’s an interesting chart: if you like your rock or your sappy ballads, songs 10 through 5 are for you. But if you came here to shake your groove thang, you’re going to like the second half of this chart much better. Onward we go, to January 29, 1977!

10.  Walk This Way — Aerosmith Amazon
9. Love Theme From “A Star is Born” (Evergreen) — Barbra Streisand Amazon iTunes
8. Blinded by the Light — Manfred Mann’s Earth Band Amazon iTunes
7. Torn Between Two Lovers — Mary MacGregor Amazon
6. New Kid in Town — Eagles Amazon iTunes
5. Hot Line — The Sylvers Amazon
4. You Make Me Feel Like Dancing — Leo Sayer Amazon iTunes
3. Dazz — Brick Amazon iTunes
2. I Wish — Stevie Wonder Amazon iTunes
1. Car Wash — Rose Royce Amazon iTunes

10. Walk This Way — Aerosmith

“Walk This Way” peaked here at #10 and became the last Aerosmith song to reach the Top 10 until, well, “Walk This Way,” ten years later. Technically, though, that’s a Run-DMC song featuring Tyler and Perry, so really, it was their last Top 10 until 1988’s power ballad “Angel.” “Walk This Way” was released in ‘75, but didn’t make a dent in the charts until it was reissued late the next year. What else to say about this song? It’s a great classic rock staple, and without it and its subsequent resurgence, who knows if any of us would have given a shit about Aerosmith from, say, 1988 to 1993. (”I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” in ‘98 doesn’t count and you know it.)

9. Love Theme From “A Star is Born” (Evergreen) — Barbra Streisand

Barbra Streisand is best known for singing others’ songs, but “Evergreen” was her own musical composition, and only the second song she had ever written. Stresiand was taking guitar lessons in preparation for her role in A Star is Born, and was jealous of her guitar teacher’s songwriting abilities. She was determined to write her own song, and though she didn’t come up with the lyrics — those came from Paul Williams — the song wound up winning the Academy Award, the Grammy, and the Golden Globe. Which just goes to prove: Do not fuck with Barbra Streisand. She is an unstoppable force. Williams, who might be best known for “The Rainbow Connection,” wrote all the songs for the movie, and also co-wrote the score.

I like this song. I don’t expect anybody to really watch this clip. I’m putting it up anyway, just for me. And James Brolin, who gets a silly face directed at him at near the end of this one.

8. Blinded by the Light — Manfred Mann’s Earth Band

Hey, you guys! You’re not going to believe this, but I just listened to “Blinded by the Light” by Manfred Mann again, and…man, this is crazy…it totally sounds like he’s saying “douche” instead of deuce!!!

What? That’s what every single discussion of this song talks about? Whoops. My bad. Let’s talk about something else for a second.

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Into the Ear of Madness: Week 3

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Over the next year Terje Fjelde has agreed to listen to nothing but David Foster on his iPod. He’s loaded the thing with over 1,200 songs produced, arranged, composed, and/or played by David Foster. A deal with the devil? He keeps wondering.

Are you ready for some Barbra Streisand and Gary Wright? Of course you are.

I think Jeff is waiting for me to crack any moment now. You know, that’s why he wanted me to do this series in the first place. A year with nothing but David Foster? You won’t last three weeks!

Guess what? I’m enjoying myself. I’m digging up information on all these old 1970s acts I never knew the first thing about, and at the same time I’m revisiting my youth listening to his mid-1980s stuff. Good or bad, those songs from the 1980s were such an important part of my life when I was about 15 — and I remember exactly why I thought they were great.

That’s not to say I still think it’s all great music — it isn’t. On the other hand, I don’t think it sucks, either, even though I kinda oughta. But hey, I’m not a professional music critic — I don’t have to conclude either way. As long as the music still matters to me one way or another, it’s good in my book. (more…)

Lost in the ’80s: When New Wave Happens to Old Artists — Barbra Streisand

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BabsIt’s the age-old story in pop music when the hits start drying up, it’s time to grab the current “hot” producer and jump on the latest trend, hoping to ride it to the top of the charts. You know what I’m talking about, Madonna. After all, it worked at the dawn of the ’80s, when Streisand rode the Bee Gees’ heat to score a few huge hits from her collaboration with Barry Gibb on the Guilty album. But Streisand hadn’t had a Top 40 hit in four years when 1985 rolled around, yet she wasn’t quite ready to become relegated to standards and schmaltz yet (that would come with her next release, The Broadway Album). Babs wanted a hit, so the call went out and producer Richard Perry answered it.

Perry was white-hot at the time, coming off his production of the Pointer Sisters’ mega-platinum smash, Breakout, which just seemed to spawn hit after hit after hit (an astounding six singles were drawn from that album). Perry brought a song called “Emotion” (download) to Babs’s attention, and it was chosen to not only be the album’s namesake, but its first single. While not really new wave, per se, it was definitely awash in the synths and drum machines of the day, sounding much like a Pointer Sisters outtake. That could also have to do with the fact that the Sisters provide backing vocals on the tune.

Streisand’s longtime label, Columbia, must have had high hopes for “Emotion,” since they pulled out all the promotional stops. A sumptuously lavish video featuring guest stars Roger Daltrey (?) and Mikhail Baryshnikov (?!?) had thousands of dollars thrown at it, including securing heavy rotation as an MTV exclusive. The result was a camp-tacular spectacle. Make sure you at least get to the 2:30 mark to witness … PUNK-ROCK STREISAND! (more…)

Chartburn: 1/18/08

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Mainstream Rock: Lou Gramm, “Midnight Blue” (1987)

John: Move over, Foreigner! There’s something blander!

Zack: Despite Lou Gramm’s dreadful, dreadful hairstyle, I really enjoy this song. I can’t help it. It’s such a simple song I could probably play it myself (and I don’t play any instruments), but I appreciate that, the same way one appreciates an old rotary telephone: not too many moving parts, won’t break down too easily, can take a good knock without falling apart, and works even when the power is out.

Scott: When Lou Gramm left Foreigner (the first time), I thought it was because he wanted to rock again, not produce mediocre pop like this. I love this guy’s voice, though. And I think that the follow-up song, “Just Between You and Me,” was a better, more passionate mediocre pop single. (more…)