Pop vets draw inspiration from the past this fall
Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY 5:01 p.m. EDT September 2, 2014
A bevy of pop and R&B veterans are revisiting familiar songs this fall, from their own hits to others’ smash singles and standards from before World War II. And several are enlisting their famous friends.
Sept. 16 marks the arrival of Barbra Streisand’s first duets album in more than a decade, Partners, which pairs her with male stars on signature songs such as People and Evergreen, as well as classics by Irving Berlin, Billy Joel and others. A week later, Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga unveil Cheek to Cheek (Sept. 23), a collection of standards that, as Gaga puts it, blends “what we love about jazz with a steamy, spicy new sound.”
Last month, Smokey Robinson hit No. 12 on the Billboard album chart by revisiting his classics with famous friends on Smokey & Friends, and Dionne Warwick will take a similar approach on Feels So Good (Oct. 28).
Also on tap: an Aretha Franklin album, tentatively set for fall, showcasing songs popularized by other celebrated female singers, from Gladys Knight to Adele; Bette Midler’s It’s the Girls (Nov. 4), an homage to soulful girl groups; and Annie Lennox‘s Nostalgia (Oct. 21), featuring tunes from the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s.
For Lennox, those songs feel “as fresh today … not just beautiful and sentimental, but covering the full range of human experience.”
Even the alt-pop duo She & Him is getting nostalgic: Classics (Oct. 28) finds Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward traveling from the 1930s to the early rock era.
Whether that groundswell will translate to commercial success remains to be seen. It has been 12 years since Rod Stewart launched his Great American Songbook series with It Had to Be You, and though it wasn’t held in high esteem by some trad-pop fans, it sold 3.3 million copies. Bennett’s own Duets: An American Classic, inspired by Frank Sinatra’s similar outings in the ’90s, was released in 2006 and has sold 1.9 million copies. (A follow-up, 2011’s Duets II, gave the octogenarian his first No. 1 album on the Billboard album chart, and has sold 967,000 copies.)
Since then, “artists of a certain vintage” – younger than Bennett, who just turned 88, but older than Gaga, 28 – have had varying success recording older material, says Keith Caulfield, associate director of charts/sales at Billboard. Changing consumption habits in the digital age have been less a factor than whether an artist has “a hook that can maximize the album’s attractiveness.”
Lionel Richie’s platinum-plus duets album Tuskegee (2012), for instance, did better than most – it was his first No. 1 album since 1986. It succeeded, says Caulfield, by offering songs Richie had written and recorded previously, “but with a twist”: They were country-flavored versions, teaming him with contemporary stars of the genre.
Caulfield notes that the pairing of Bennett and Gaga also boasts an element of novelty and “multi-generational appeal. It could introduce Gaga’s audience to songs they’ve never heard of, and show Tony Bennett’s audience a different side of her.”
The element of prestige may also be a factor: The cutoff date for Grammy Awards nominations is Sept. 30, which happens to be the same day that a vinyl version of Lennox’s Nostalgia is out, making it eligible.
Says Caulfield: “It’s probably no accident that so many of these albums are coming in September.”
Contributing: Patrick Ryan
