12/01/2005
Artists set new standards
By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY
Photo: A Sammy Scan
NEW YORK – The standards for standards are changing – in a musical sense, at least.
The term is still most often applied to songs predating the rock era, when Tin Pan Alley and Broadway and film musicals were the richest sources of material for American popular music. “Standards are, in some ways, the songs that you’ll be hearing in piano bars and hotel lounges for the next 20 years, where people are singing just to be singing,” says music journalist Alan Light.
But the list of those songs is evolving as time goes by – no pun intended. A string of recent CDs reflect changes in what popular artists from country star Martina McBride to jazz veteran Herbie Hancock to pop diva Bette Midler are presenting as classics. Musicians are embracing the work not only of latter-day pop tunesmiths such as Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb and Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, but of more contemporary singer/songwriters and artists with rootsier styles.
Bacharach, who recently released a collection of new songs called At This Time, understands the enduring allure of pre-rock gems. “There’s a reason people go back to those old songs. Is it a yearning for melody? I don’t know, but Rod Stewart is on his fourth successful collection now, right?”
Indeed, Stewart’s four compilations of traditional pop favorites have been best sellers, helping fuel the boom for standards albums.
But like Bacharach, whose guests on Time range from Elvis Costello to Dr. Dre, artists are also seeking to broaden their options. Hancock’s current CD, Possibilities, combines original songs with tracks by Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Leon Russell and Sting and features appearances by some of those artists. British singer/songwriter Jamie Cullum, 26, interpreted Jimi Hendrix and the modern rock band The Doves as well as Cole Porter and Lerner and Loewe on his first two CDs, including October’s Catching Tales.
Also in October, McBride introduced the chart-topping Timeless, composed of hits made famous by Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn, among others.
“This is music that I grew up loving and have been listening to my whole life,” McBride says. “Still, when you actually get behind a microphone and sing them, you do find it striking just how amazing they are. There’s this wonderful simplicity. They’re only 2½ minutes long, and yet they say everything that needs to be said.
“There are definitely great songs being written today. But the style can be much different. Sometimes they can be more clever or sophisticated, but that’s not always better. With older songs, there’s so much authenticity and heart.”
Carrying the torch songs
Yet, for Light and other music insiders, country music is the corner of the pop field in which the torch for future standards burns brightest – and not by coincidence. In Nashville, singers can still maintain credibility as interpretive artists without writing or producing.
“Bob Dylan and The Beatles transformed rock so that songwriting was supposed to be something personal, rather than something anyone could leave their mark on,” says Light. “In the early ’60s there were post-Tin Pan Alley writing factories like the Brill Building, but that was not what rock ‘n’ roll was supposed to be about.”
Nor has it been what R&B has been about lately. “It’s so different now than it was even 10 or 15 years ago, when Whitney Houston and Toni Braxton and Boyz II Men were recording the kinds of songs that would have lent themselves to lots of different interpretations,” Light says. “Hip-hop production has become such a dominant force; everything is more beat- and production-driven than song-driven.”
Midler agrees. “The beat has killed us. I love the beat, but the problem with new songs is you can’t really sing them. One of the great joys of standards was that everybody knew the words; it was a kind of an emotional shorthand between people.”
Light does see more risks being taken in jazz, where “artists from Cassandra Wilson on down have tried to find other songbooks beyond the canon of the ’30s and the ’40s to explore. There are some really interesting things jazz players are doing with hip-hop.”
Wilson is working with celebrated producer T Bone Burnett on an album tentatively slated for April, set to include songs by The Wallflowers and Blind Lemon Jefferson.
But Cullum worries that some jazz artists might be influenced more by curiosity or fashion than musical affinity.
“Jazz singers tend to follow a certain pack, and in the past five years or so, they seem to have opened up to people like Neil Young and Tom Waits and Paul Simon,” says Cullum. “Suddenly you’ve got those guys alongside Cole Porter. Great as that is, it’s still following the pack.”
Perhaps not by chance, the rock artists who have proven most adventurous in interpreting other people’s tunes include many who have secured acclaim as songwriters themselves: Elvis Costello, Sting, Simon, Elton John, Don Henley, Joni Mitchell, Prince. Chris Botti, a jazz trumpeter whose latest album, To Love Again, features Sting and Steven Tyler singing older songs, sees the attraction.
Differing standards
“I think there are two different kinds of standards,” says Botti. “It’s no secret why Miles Davis and Keith Jarrett turn to those sweeping melodies in the great American songbook. But if you’re blessed with an amazing instrument as a singer, it can be fun to cover a song by Joni Mitchell or Bob Dylan, which relies more on lyric content.”
These days, in fact, Broadway divas such as Rebecca Luker and Melissa Errico are as likely to record songs by Mitchell, Billy Joel and Randy Newman as their pop peers. Actor Peter Gallagher of The O.C., who starred in productions of Grease and Guys and Dolls before rising to fame on film and TV, just released 7 Days in Memphis, a compilation of blues and soul favorites.
“I started out on Broadway but didn’t feel particularly connected to that music,” recalls Gallagher, 50. “So I asked myself, what are my generation’s standards? I didn’t want to do the songs I didn’t think could be improved upon. The idea that took shape was to do adult music. If you’re over 17 or 25 today, this subtle alienation takes place; it’s very different from the message I got from Dean Martin or Sinatra, who were cool and sang with great craft and humility. My feeling is that a good story well told will always find an audience, because it makes people feel less alone.”
Musician/historian Michael Feinstein agrees with Gallagher’s basic theory, although he cites some of the same concerns expressed by Light and Midler.
“It will be interesting to see the expansion of the great American songbook,” says Feinstein, whose latest CD is Hopeless Romantics with jazz icon George Shearing. “It’s wonderful that we can acknowledge people like Jimmy Webb, Paul Simon, Carole King and Paul Williams. But a lot of contemporary music exists as classic records as opposed to classic songs. Only time can determine what will last and endure past its recorded version.”
Revered songwriters remain hopeful for the future. Bacharach praises the British band Coldplay, while Newman mentions Maroon 5’s catchy hits.
But Newman concedes, “Songs written in the ’30s were more likely to have been recorded in the ’60s than songs from the ’60s were in the ’90s. That’s been sort of a steady decline. Also, what’s different now is a lot of the artists who wrote the hits are still doing them. Elton John and James Taylor and Paul McCartney are out there carrying their standards around.”
Some artists have even taken to reviving their own hits. Cyndi Lauper was inspired to follow up her traditional pop album, 2003’s At Last, with this fall’s The Body Acoustic because “I was angry that my own song had been covered so many times.”
That would be Lauper’s 1984 smash Time After Time, which she performs with Sarah McLachlan on the new CD. Other tracks pair Lauper, also on previous singles, with Shaggy and Jeff Beck.
“What we consider standards will change as generations do,” Lauper reasons. “Things mutate, you know? It’s only natural.”
Not the same old song
Artists on the front line of changing musical standards include:
Martina McBride. Her Timeless salutes country classics.
Bette Midler. She Sings the Peggy Lee Songbook on her new release.
Cyndi Lauper. On The Body Acoustic, she revamps her own songs.
Jamie Cullum. Catching Tales mixes tunes from rock and musicals.
