Barbra Streisand - Duets

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• STREISAND BARBRA DUETS

Free Music Notes for Duets

Free Music Review: Best My Guest! Streisand and Guests Shine!
Hit: 5 Stars

The collection opens with a new duet with Barry Manilow, "I Won't Be The One To Let Go," and it proves one of the best selections here. I won't get into issues of whether or not Streisand's range is declining, or her vocal dynamic is less sonorous than it was thirty years ago. She's sixty years old, for heaven's sake. This duet is extraordinary for its level of elegant, straightforward singing by these two veterans of pop music. It's a good song, with Manilow at his best: tasteful and restrained. Streisand seems to take her cue from him, and though her performance seems to lack the kind of bravura we've grown to expect, the simplicity she brings to her singing (a few simple arpeggios) is refreshing. Not unsurpringly, she selected her duet with Barry Gibb, "Guilty," for the second selection. Gibb managed to package all of Streisand's vocal eccentricities, and her range from torch singer to supper club entertainer, into a pure pop package. "Guilty" sounds better than ever.

The third entry here is the famous duet with Neil Diamond. It remains, perhaps, the most impassioned (even romantic) of all of them. It is a great combination of Streisand's incredible sound against Diamond's gruffer, nearly-spoken singing. His voice is strong enough to hold its own against her longer-held notes, her octave-high jumps and other calisthenics. This duet with Neil Diamond marks a type of duet that is typical in the overproduced, string-infested world of "Barbra Land." She'll duet with a male singer who basically holds the line of the melody while she performs balletic vocals around him, usually providing a vocal backdrop of sheer acoustic beauty (an example would be that darn humming of hers that seems so ... sexy). The format usually works well for her. This singing/speaking dynamic dominates her duets with Kris Kristofferson, Bryan Adams, Don Johnson, and unfortunately, Frank Sinatra. "I've Got A Crush On You" with Sinatra is a disaster from the start, when they decided to sing in two different keys! Streisand dragged Sinatra into Barbra Land with overproduced harps and strings, new arrangements, and his aged and tired voice sounds bleak. Barbra (in her own key) wraps his charmless performance in gold ribbons. She ended up burying him. She really wouldn't do it to anyone else. Don Johnson, strangely enough, sounds great. With nothing to lose, he gamely follows where she leads.

Most of the singers here are pretty happy in Barbra Land. Johnny Mathis and Michael Crawford give amazing peformances. "Enough is Enough," with Donna Summer, remains one of Streisand's and Summer's finest vocal performances-- an amazing feat of singing. The idea of female solidarity is continued with "Tell Him," a duet with Celine Dion. Dion is clearly in thrall to Streisand, but still unwilling to let her Diva get a note in edgewise. Unfortunately, theirs is a shout-fest of sorts--with a little singing in the midst.

The zany, early Streisand is represented in her duet with Harold Arlen on his "Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead" from "The Wizard of Oz." It was campy then and it's campy now. Perhaps she has recognized the power of her early camp persona--it undid a generation of earlier Divas. But not Judy Garland. The Garland duet remains the center of this collection. Streisand recalled in liner notes for "Just For the Record" that when she clasped Garland's hand during the duet, the older singer was shaking. I'll bet she was. Every time something went wrong for Garland during the 1960s, her managers and producers would torment her by threatening to bring in Streisand to replace her. But if Garland was rattled, Streisand wasn't. Her singing with Garland was brilliant, even natural on this early outing--if only because Garland let her have the stage.

The Garland duet is placed on this compilation just before Streisand's duet with Josh Groban. Is this a passing of the torch? Don't think so. This is one of the least successful duets on the recording. It is Groban, this time, who is shaking, in fact, he seems scared stiff. In "All I Know Of Love," Groban is given the pretentious Italian lyrics, which he performs in aria-like bursts of singing. Barbra seems to pretend he isn't there. Like the 16 singers who preceded him, he had the chance to shine, to prove himself against the big voice, but he just didn't make the cut.

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