What Matters Most 2011

What Matters Most 2011
Barbra Streisand has never made a secret of the fact that she adores her good friends, the lyricists Marilyn and Alan Bergman. She dedicated this album to their songs and in doing so created one of her most heartfelt and gorgeous albums of all time. It's hard to imagine that with this, her 33rd studio album, Barbra was still giving the world such amazing music, with vocals as assured and lovely as she'd ever recorded. Every song is new for Barbra, with the exception of "That Face." But the snippet of that from Color Me Barbra was only a preview of the fantastic, swing arrangement here. "Windmills" is a wondrous recording, audaciously done by Barbra with an a cappella opening. "Nice 'N' Easy" re-creates Sinatra's song of courtship into Streisand's song of seduction. There are highlights throughout, like Barbra's delving into Portuguese for the samba flavored "So Many Stars." Perhaps the most important cut of all is "What Matters Most," a song that seems to sum up Barbra's feelings about her friends…and the music they've created together from The Way We Were to Yentl. Undiscovered gems: "Something New In My Life" which sounds like a Barbra love song to her son Jason, and "I'll Never Say Goodbye," which Barbra revealed was her idea of what Juliet would say to Romeo.   

The Windmills of Your Mind
Something New In My Life
Solitary Moon
Nice 'N' Easy
Alone in the World
So Many Stars
The Same Hello, the Same Goodbye
That Face
I'll Never Say Goodbye
What Matters Most

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