Barbra Streisand has a new duets album of her own, Partners, where she overpowers Billy Joel, Lionel Richie, and Josh Groban I dare you to listen to her “Come Rain or Come Shine” with John Mayer. Rather, they tend to be last-gasp bank-account fillers for aging artists, like Frank Sinatra’s two Duets albums, in which, with his voice failing him in his late 70s, he barked opposite the likes of Luther Vandross, Bono, Chrissie Hynde, Jimmy Buffett, and Kenny G’s soprano sax-two of the worst albums of Sinatra’s career and also, alas, two of the most popular.
(Tony: “I can’t give you anything but love”-beat-“Gaga.”)Īnother problem with duets albums is they too often serve no real musical purpose. There’s a whiff or two of that here: if I had my way, vocalists would never address each other while singing, especially when one of them is named Gaga. At least they didn’t defrost “Baby It’s Cold Outside.”ĭuets albums in general, which often have a corny, stunt quality, both partners trying too hard to sound as if they’re having the best damn time a recording studio ever saw. The song selection, which hews to obvious, well-trod duet territory, such as “Let’s Face the Music and Dance,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” “I Won’t Dance,” and, of course, the title song. The previous champion? Tony Bennett, at 85, three years ago with Duets II. After one week in release, the record is holding down the top spot on the Billboard 200 album chart-making Bennett, at 88, the oldest artist ever to earn that distinction. You should also know, a few quibbles aside, that it’s pretty wonderful.
No, you already know it’s Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga. Don’t be misled by the awful cover: Cheek to Cheek isn’t an album of duets between Georgia O’Keeffe and Linda Lovelace.
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