3 days ago
Resistance is futile to Barbra Streisand's latest schmaltzy offering
'When I sing, people shut up,' Barbra Streisand once said. Listening to her new schmaltzy collection of duets – The Secret of Life: Partners Volume Two – I did wonder if that could be because they'd dozed off.
There's something so luxuriously plush about the 83-year-old megastar 's reassuringly (and remarkably) unwrinkled vocals that you find yourself sinking into these solid 11 pop/jazz standards (and one new track) as if they were pillows upon a massage table.
Following the format of 2014's Partners, the predictably warm, oily orchestration relaxes your muscles, and the hypnotic click track beat dims the lights ahead of A-list guest turns, from Paul McCartney, James Taylor and Sting through Tim McGraw, Seal and Sam Smith.
Evidence that the world was ready for Babs's aural pampering came two weeks ago: Letter to my 13 Year Old Self (her duet with 26-year-old Chinese-Icelandic singer-songwriter Laufey) topped the US iTunes chart in a week when Sabrina Carpenter and Ed Sheeran both dropped singles.
Originally released by Laufey in 2023, it's a tender tearjerker of a ballad in which the young songwriter looked back on a youth during which she felt out of place surrounded by blue-eyed Scandinavian blondes.
'I'm so sorry that they pick you last/ Try to say your foreign name and laugh/ I know that you feel loud, so different from the crowd…' it runs. But, like the triumphantly metamorphosing duckling-to-swan heroines of so many Streisand movies, the older Laufey wants to reassure the 'funny girl' she once was will one day 'be up on stage' and 'the days of tears and failure fears and no one cares/ Will all make sense'.
Streisand adds maternal wisdom as she reflects upon her own difficult youth and long struggle for recognition, while also seeming to wrap an arm around the rising star. Always a generous enunciator – a singer whose vibrato can brush the skin of emotions like a feather before plunging you into a sunken bathtub of soul – she wraps plump, loving lips around the offer of 'a squeeze' in a way that will make listeners feel they've had a real hug.
Less successful is spongy new song One Heart, One Voice, on which Streisand, Ariana Grande and Mariah Carey ladle up sickly sweet lyrics and vocal sprinkles about onto the bland whipped cream and jelly of a sub-Disney love trifle.
Hozier throws some gloopy hot wax at Ewan MacColl's 1957 folk song, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, while Streisand revels in the dramatic pauses. Macca pours himself so lightly into the easygoing affection of his 2012 song My Valentine (written for his third wife Nancy Shevell) that you can swallow the maraschino cherry of the cheesy guitar solo.
Both Streisand and Josh Groban (the only artist to appear on both Partners albums) relish the stage musical melodrama of Where Do I Go from You.
Neither Sting's Fragile or James Taylor's The Secret 'O Life – both lovely songs – gain much from being turned into two-handers. Bob Dylan makes more effective conversational space for himself on the 1934 jazz standard The Very Thought of You – the five o'clock stubble of his devoted rasp leaning into her silky sass as a breezy harmonica blows a fresh dynamic through the old tune. It's hard to believe that they recorded in separate rooms at separate times. Sam Smith also brings a rather poignant depth to the moments his voice joins hers on To Lose You Again.
