Barbra Streisand swoons with McCartney, Dylan, Mariah on lush duets album: Review

USA Today

2 days ago

The woman who served us 'People,' 'Evergreen,' 'The Way We Were' and more than 100 other singles doesn't need to record another album. She barely needs to leave her surely-gardenia-scented bedroom.
But Barbra Streisand, 83, has always been not just indefatigable, but interested: In creating, in songcraft and in pushing herself. After 60-plus years in show business, she's earned the right to drop the New York hustle ingrained in her DNA and take a breath.
Her 37th studio album, 'The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume Two,' is that breath. It's a cozy, comforting audible hug from a parade of familiar friends, including Paul McCartney, James Taylor, Josh Groban, Sting, Ariana Grande and Mariah Carey. Even Bob Dylan hopped aboard this love train.
Streisand's new duets release is the companion to 2014's 'Partners,' with Groban as her only repeat collaborator. While her voice is still that voice – rich in timbre, sleek in tone – she's chosen to share the microphone again because it's a comfort zone.
Some of Streisand's finest work has been bolstered by worthy peers, from Barry Gibb ('Guilty' in 1980) to Neil Diamond ('You Don't Bring Me Flowers' in 1978) to Celine Dion ('Tell Him' in 1997). Not so much Don Johnson ('Till I Loved You' in 1988).
Continuing her stretch with these 11 cross-generational songs, including a pair of newbies – one with Sam Smith ('To Lose You Again') and the other with Grande and Carey ('One Heart, One Voice') to complete a diva triumvirate – Streisand soars.
Highlights are many, but here are a few.
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'Letter to My 13 Year Old Self' (Laufey)
The young Icelandic jazz-pop singer Laufey spoke to Streisand's inner awkward teenager with this heart-piercing ballad from her 2023 album, 'Bewitched.' This lusher recording, laden with plucked strings and two creamy voices blending seamlessly, is more than a deeply affecting ballad with lyrics such as, 'You'll grow up and grow so tough/charm them/write your story/fall in love a little too/the things you thought you'd never do.' It's a poignant look back at how the trivial things that felt like an emotional avalanche as a teen shape us, as well as the importance of taking pride in shutting out the noise.
'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face' (Hozier)
Popularized by the late Roberta Flack, this cooing ballad can sound plodding and endless with the wrong arrangement. But over a blanket of velvety strings, Streisand turns Irish indie-rocker Hozier into a smitten Romeo. Their pacing is like a dance, dipping and rising while always staying within the lines for four and a half minutes of lyrical seduction.
'My Valentine' (Paul McCartney)
In its native form, this 2012 Paul McCartney song written for wife Nancy Shevell drifts along on gentle piano and guitar, McCartney's voice authentically imperfect. With Streisand, it's evident how he strives to meet her note for note, breath for breath, as strings swell in the pockets of the lyrics. It's easily McCartney's sweetest vocal since his 'Flowers in the Dirt' days.
'The Very Thought of You' (Bob Dylan)
A duet in the making since 1970 between the shy poet laureate of contemporary music and the preeminent songbird of the past six decades doesn't disappoint, primarily because Streisand coaxed Dylan to actually sing. Streisand has said it was his choice to record Ray Noble's 1934 pop standard, and it's a style that suits him as he sings softly with only a hint of his distinctive nasal twang. They seem like the most incongruous pairing, but both hail from the same Greenwich Village haunts, tethered at the core for life.
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'One Heart, One Voice' (Mariah Carey and Ariana Grande)
Much as when Streisand teamed with Celine Dion for the vocal duel 'Tell Him,' this seemed like another opportunity to play 'who can run the vocal scales the longest.' Instead, this otherwise generic ballad that preaches the merits of rejoicing in partnership, love guiding the way and sacred gardens with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, showcases a trio steeped in restraint. Grande and Carey sing with delicacy, while Streisand augments their shared vocals with her own resonant tone. They're the holy trinity of glorious sound.