Anne Murray - All of Me
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Free Music Notes for All of Me
Free Music Review: Lovely, If Uninspired
Hit: 3 Stars
I love Anne Murray and have virtually all her albums. I am also a fan of this genre, of contemporary artists collecting and giving their own spin to classic material. Because Anne did this magnificently with her 1993 "Croonin'" album, it makes this simplistic collection all the more disappointing. The greatest hits CD portion is fine, but we fans already have all this stuff. The classic songs CD often sounds like a lounge act, with uninspired arrangements and choice of material. Rod Stewart, Harry Nilsson, Natalie Cole and Anne herself have all pulled this off previously in a unique and highly satisfying way. The result here is very pleasant, but I crave more than the same old standards everyone else has recorded, set to ho-hum arrangements. Hundreds of less recorded yet still familiar tunes are out there, waiting to be rediscovered, in every genre.
Anne may not be looking for any advice, but I'd like her to search out a producer from another era she's never worked with, and spend a lot of time listening to old records, as many of us do, to discover potential standards or overlooked classics --and even songs that never made it big, but deserved to. Etta James' "At Last" went totally ignored, languishing for 30 years before being resurrected for a Jaguar commercial, to suddenly become a new "standard". Other gems, like Timi Yuro's "I Apologize" still await.
Free Music Review: Greatest hits plus a mixed bag of American standards
Hit: 3 Stars
Purchase this 2-CD set for the first disc, which features sterling remasters of most if not all of her greatest hits. The second disc holds far less appeal. Murrary warbles pre-WWII ditties like "What'll I Do" and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow". Problem is, she doesn't have the voice, the reach or the emotional resonance to perform most of them. With maybe two exceptions, they are performed in the most perfunctory manner; they sound like throwaways, whether she intended them to or not. If you thought this was going to be a sequel to CROONIN', her wonderful collection of post-WWII standards, you will be sadly let down. If you want to hear those songs modernized and done right, listen to Harry Nilsson's interpretations, available on both the original album A LITTLE TOUCH OF SCHMILSSON and the 2-CD Australian set, THE BEST OF HARRY NILSSON (and this includes SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW, which was cut from the original album).Free Music Review: Half Greatest Hits and Half boring Covers
Hit: 3 Stars
I should really give this one a 2.5 because exactly half was good and half bad. This is a two-disc set and only one is listenable to me. The first disc is nothing but boring, uninspired covers of songs that everyone else has already covered better. It ends up sounding like a Vegas lounge act a lot of the time. Anne adds nothing new to any of the performances. The second disc is just an ordinary best-of so is fine. I would advise people to just buy a different best-of and forget the covers disc altogether.