Shirley Bassey - The Performance
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Artist: Shirley BasseyEdition: Music CD
Format: Import
CD Release Date: 2009-11-17
Music Label: Polydor UK
Free Music Notes for The Performance
Free Music Review: A majestic statement!
Hit: 5 Stars
It's hard to believe that Dame Shirley Bassey is 72. Her powerful pipes would put some of todays divas to shame. Still very much relevant, she performs at the Glastonbury Festival with acts less than half her age, and this CD just made the UK top 20 albums chart.
Her last album "Get the party started" was a covers project with edgy and experimental production dramatically transforming songs like Lionel Richie's cheesy smash hit "Hello" into a Trip Hop classic (rather cool), among others.
For her new CD "The Performance", she treads the same path Nancy Sinatra did on her 2004 eponymous disc. Contemporary British acts (some huge fans of the Dame) have written new songs for her and David Arnold handles production duties. The result? a sweeping, majestic statement that sounds like it was recorded in the 60s, much like Duffy and the like are emulating.
The Pet Shop Boys provide the sweeping theatrical sounding "The performance of my life" and she gives it that. A string swathed ballad with a nice horn break.
Tom Baxter provides the delicate almost lullaby-like "Almost there" which builds to a bombastic climax. "Im not quite so long, I'm not quite so foolish" she reminisces. Rufus Wainwright provides the Flamenco-tinged "Apartment". Gary Barlow provides the horn-sprinkled "This time". Nick Hodgson provides the sweeping "I love you now", John Barry (who wrote 3 James Bond theme songs for her) provides "Our time is now" (which starts off deceptively subtle but builds up to a sax-filled Bond-style ballad).
David Arnold and David McAlmont provide "As God is my witness", David Arnold and Don Black provide the cinematic "No good about goodbye", Manic Street Preachers and David Arnold provide the sunny "The girl from tiger bay" (already sounding like a theme song and remniscent of Propellerheads' History Repeating featuring the Dame herself), KT Tunstall provides the edgy horn-peppered Bluesy "Nice men", and Richard Hawley provides the melancholic spare piano cello cymbal-framed ballad.
This is a collection of sweeping dramatic and heartfelt songs. Beautiful!
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