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I'll admit to liking some of her work, even if she sometimes has a very grating personality.

As Disco was also a topic, here are Barbra's brief forays into disco. I know some may consider her Guilty album, produced by Barry Gibby as disco-lite, but to me, it's always been more Easy Listening, with the exception of Promises.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/5szncrypGpU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bhr77PnXZpc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/nketoWvCES4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

And of course:

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/QsY066wa08E" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

  • Member

She was always annoying. I think it is almost agreed universally she was supremely talented, but her need to hold notes and show everyone that anything you can do she can do better has ruined more than one song I think. She takes a three minute song and makes it into a four minute song. This is cute though

<iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/nrmIEl9S8VQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

And her duet at the Grammys was unforgettable and wlll wind up on any Grammy retrospective

<iframe width="480" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wj10EzNKA2M" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

  • Member

What a coincidnece... I just got my new Apollas CD today, and in the CD booklet, lo and behold, there is a picture of Ella Jamerson with her hair in curlers, holding a big meat fork FULL Of chitlins, and Babs herself gettin ready to take big old bite! I about died!

Edited by alphanguy74

  • Member

It's really a testament to Babs that she managed to transcend so many different eras and trends and still keep her core element and audience in tact.

I'm partial to her 70's output, which is all over the place and the era she was embraced pop and contemporary music the most.

  • Member
True... I hate that melisma crap with the fire of a thousand suns.

That';s one reason I love Donna Summer (if people on here haven't realized it yet lol). She has a voice that at its peak could compare to Whitney Houston (and she certainly kept her voice much better than most of these people), yet nearly always she uses her voice to suit the song, not that American Idol thing of using the song to show off your voice and barely even singing the melody.

Being a HUGE HUGE musical theatre fag, I think people always assume I love Barbra. But I'm pretty mixed on her. I LOVE early Barbra--she sounds terrific in Funny Girl (better in the earlier cast recording than the movie soundtrack), I love all of her 60s albums, and I admit I love much of her cheesy 70s stuff (The Way We Were, her disco songs--her and Donna Summer are so well paired up on Enough is Enough vocally, there's a funny outake bootleg floating around from that recording session where they both improv swears and other things into their lyrics and are cracking each other up).

But, if we're talking musically and not movie wise, I lose interest by the 80s. Stephen Sondheim is my all time favorite composer, and I appreciate thatg she helped get many of his songs noticed by non theatre people thanks to Babs singing them on her 80s Broadway albums, but they're SO over produced, they just become cheesy mushy adult contemporary crap. And I feel that way about a lot of her stuff post late 70s--it startes to verge into Celine Dion territory for me (don't get me wrong, I have some Celine guilty pleasurers). There's no edge, and by that I don't mean she should do cutting edge pop, but it starts to sound like muzak to me.

(Actually getting to her movies, I think after the mid 80s or so she started to similarly make easy, middle of the road movies. Even Prince of Tides, she directs it well, and it's not a bad movie, unlike say crap like The Mirror Has Two Faces, but in her own adaptation she gutted the original dark novel to make it a movie about her character, a shrink, saving a troubled man which is one small part of the novel).

I did really love her album from a couple of years back, Love is the Answer, where she went back to the jazz, stripped down arrangements of her 60s material. And I admit I didn't hear her album from last year where it sounds like she may have done the same. But I can never fully love Babs, except early Barbra.

I see her two songs done with Paul Jabara, Enough is Enough and The Main Event are posted--love the long 12 or so minute versions of both. Jabara actually wrote It's Raining Men for Barbra and Donna Summer to reunite on, but their labels didn't want them associated at the time with such a camp song, LOL.

Anyway some faves not chosen...

I love the slightly campy, over the top theme song she did for Eyes of Laura Mars (I believe her boyfriend at the time, a hairdresser, produced the movie and she did it as a favour, or something)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTp0vErHJOM

EVen more over the top is the cover she did with Jim Steinman (OK this is from the 80s). Steinman's songs are always a guilty pleasure to me (Total Eclipse, All Coming Back to Me, Meatloaf, etc) Love the spoken open lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st1bTsBQH-0 This is from Love is the Answer--nice to hear her just with a piano again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okGMxmMlbqI

I can;t believe they cut this song from Funny Girl when it turned into a movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qCeNlKTKSU

.

One of the greatest female singers of all time. Lady Gaga, Madonna can't hold a candle to her. Somewhere:

This is just a matter of taste, but this is exactly what I mean bny her 80s albums turning me off. I LOVE the song Somewhere of course, but she just sings through it with no nuance in her voice, and the production is like stinky cheese to me, it's SOOO over produced.

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