November 28, 2003

Old Songs Revisited by Voices of Today

ne way to draw the map of popular music in the new millennium would be to divide the world into two volatile, interacting territories. One, the world of pop for grown-ups, is a land of song where the sunsets are dramatic and the pace is leisurely. The other, younger world is a defiant nation under a groove, a fast-food franchise in which tornado watches are announced daily.

Every pop record, of course, borrows elements from both sides. The most aggressive rap hit still carries a suggestion of song structure, and the dreamiest pop ballad has a time signature, even if the beat is faint. Despite communication between the two worlds (often carried on in the form of remixes, which can pump hard rhythm into just about anything), they have never been further apart than they are today.

The distance between them has allowed a resurgence of a pop classicism that sees the past in a new light. The old generation gap between rock and pre-rock music has given way to a new and even wider one, with hip-hop and metal and their assorted hybrids on one side, and everything else on the other.

A flurry of recent standards albums by artists identified with rock and soul blurs the old distinctions between music made before and after 1960. As "American Idol" has demonstrated in its tacky way, pre-rock standards like "Over the Rainbow" and golden oldies like "Respect" are increasingly seen as pretty much the same thing. Today, the most famous songs of the Gershwins, Richard Rodgers, the Beatles, Motown, Burt Bacharach, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Sting share an uneasy artistic parity.

You have only to listen to two of the year's most satisfying adult pop albums, Michael McDonald's "Motown" (Motown) and Barbra Streisand's "Movie Album" (Columbia), to sense the changes. Both recordings are vocal tours de force that extend the repertory of popular standards into the rock and soul era.

And who knew until recently that that rusty-voiced rock roustabout, Rod Stewart, had a fondness for vintage American standards? The newer of his two best-selling collections, "As Time Goes By: The Great American Songbook, Volume II" (J Records), includes 14 pre-rock songs arranged in a bland, bouncy ballroom-dancing style with a British music hall flavor. The record, whose tempos never really slow down, includes breezy duets with Queen Latifah ("As Time Goes By") and Cher ("Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered"). Mr. Stewart croons them in a high, croaking half-voice reminiscent of Billie Holiday in her final years, but without Holiday's jazz phrasing and interpretive depth. Whether or not you like these two albums (and I don't much), Mr. Stewart at least deserves credit for perpetuating the lives of songs that have at least as good a shot at longevity as "Maggie May" and "Tonight's the Night."

Other recent collections of standards by singers who have never gone there before find Michael Bolton (also at half-voice), Aaron Neville (as twirly-gospelly as ever), Boz Scaggs (swinging agreeably with a small pop-jazz group) and Cyndi Lauper digging into the past.

The best of these is Ms. Lauper's "At Last" (Epic), whose far-reaching repertory ranges from "Makin' Whoopee" (a duet with Tony Bennett) to Motown ("You've Really Got a Hold on Me"). The quirky chamber pop arrangements showcase Ms. Lauper as a smart, offbeat kook (the nostalgic version of her "She's So Unusual" persona), and her performances are intensely committed. The one inconsistency is Ms. Lauper's uncertain pitch. Half the time, she sounds like a naïve, vocally insecure disciple of Rickie Lee Jones.

Celebrating Breakthroughs

The McDonald and Streisand albums lead my list of this year's recommended adult pop albums because they're so beautifully sung. Both records are late-career breakthroughs from artists who seemed adrift. Both are forceful reminders that after the song, the voice is still the thing.

Mr. McDonald's "Motown" is the kind of album that everyone hoped he would make after leaving the Doobie Brothers but that he held off recording for two decades. He is one of the few male blue-eyed soul singers to grasp instinctively the soul man's attitude of impassioned humility, in which vulnerability is a badge of virility. There has always been a seam of genuine sorrow and heartbreak in Mr. McDonald's rich, chocolaty baritone, which shades up into an anguished bark. Here his voice is pushed to the foreground on the album's 14 songs, all of them pop-soul standards, including "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" and "Ain't No Mountain High Enough."

If Mr. McDonald doesn't slam out a home run every time out, his heart-rending versions of Marvin Gaye's "I Want You" and Stevie Wonder's "All in Love Is Fair," along with a sly jazzy version of Mr. Wonder's "Higher Ground," match the originals in power and surpass anything Mr. McDonald has done. The arrangements refer to the Motown originals without straining to be copies. This wonderful record reminds you that the genius of Motown was in finding a seamless blend of song and groove in which the two sides had equal weight.

Ms. Streisand's "Movie Album" is far and away her most satisfying recording since "The Broadway Album," released 18 years ago. Since then, she has demonstrated an unfortunate late-blooming fondness for saccharine kitsch. For the inspirational album "Higher Ground," she adopted a tone of hectoring grandiosity. But all that has been radically softened in "The Movie Album," a well-chosen collection of Hollywood chestnuts that include the gospel ballad "Calling You," from "Bagdad Cafe." Ms. Streisand has also pared away many of her mannerisms. Gone are self-dramatizing gasps and ostentatious sobs, and her whining nasality is kept to a minimum. The result is revelatory. The pure, restrained singing on "The Movie Album" is, in a word, beautiful.

The ballad-dominated collection includes three definitive interpretations: "Wild Is the Wind," "How Do You Keep the Music Playing?" and a swooning bossa nova version of "I'm in the Mood for Love." Yes, there's still too much aural gloss for a real sense of intimacy to be communicated. But this indication that Ms. Streisand has finally discovered that less is more is very encouraging.

A Selection for Grown-Ups

Here is a selection of other worthy adult pop albums released in the last year that won't wear out their welcome after one listen. New names like the singer-songwriters Phil Roy, Damien Rice and Teitur are mixed in with rock, folk and jazz veterans, many of whom are over 50 and going stronger than ever. (CD's range in price from $9.98 to $18.98.)

STING: "Sacred Love" (A&M). Sting has done more than anyone else lately to forge a sophisticated and flexible fusion between world music and traditional pop without reducing international influences to kitsch references. The music on "Sacred Love" is dense and swirling, the mood earnest, the tone spiritual. As always, one of the strongest tools in Sting's musical arsenal is his gift for simple, repetitive melodic phrases that stick in your consciousness even as they are put through sophisticated harmonic changes. If the album has its dull moments, its high points are thrilling. "The Book of My Life," a fireside meditation on memory and approaching death, set amid swirling sitars, is as deep and memorable a song as any Sting has composed. And in "Whenever I Say Your Name," a soaring call-and-response duet with Mary J. Blige, the two singers egg each other on to peaks of enthusiasm.

PHIL ROY: "Issues and Options" (Or). Mr. Roy, who lives outside Philadelphia, worked as a professional songwriter in Los Angeles for two decades (he wrote for the movie "Leaving Las Vegas") and had minor hits for the Neville Brothers and others before beginning his career as a solo performer. He is now in his 40's. His emotionally naked singing in a style midway between folk and soul conveys a piercing honesty. (Imagine an amalgam of Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen and Jesse Colin Young.) Anyone can relate to his autobiographical lyrics expressing the spiritual crisis of someone determined not to succumb to the pervasive nihilism of the age. He is the rare songwriter who can talk about God without sounding preachy and doctrinaire. Mr. Roy is a natural melodist and a gifted arranger whose songs blend folk and pop-soul hooks with echoes of bossa nova into music that is fairly complex yet entirely accessible.

ANNIE LENNOX: "Bare" (J Records). Ms. Lennox's third solo album almost matches the achievement of "Diva," her 1992 tour de force of chameleonic singing and layered production. "Bare," an anguished, introverted breakup album, is just as lavish. Its finest songs, "The Hurting Time" and "Honestly," are self-scrutinizing ballads in which this Scottish singer projects equal measures of vulnerability, imperiousness and diffidence. "Honestly," in particular, is a sweeping midtempo ballad that rides on irresistible, shifting dance-floor grooves and has an internal chorus of overdubbed voices that express the narrator's conflicting inner thoughts; a bravura pop moment.

DAMIEN RICE: "O" (Vector). This Irish singer-songwriter projects a raw, undiluted passion whose intensity recalls Jeff Buckley and the Van Morrison of "Astral Weeks." His song "Delicate" begins as a dreamy folk-pop meditation for acoustic guitar and strings, then builds into a cracked half-scream. That unpredictability is typical of his quirky, asymmetrical songs, which intensify as they go along and sometimes abruptly break off (as in "Amie"). His potential is extraordinary.

RICHARD THOMPSON: "The Old Kit Bag" (Apart). This venerable British folk-rocker is as brilliant and sardonic as ever in "The Old Kit Bag," which is bit more contemplative and folk-leaning than his recent albums. The characters in these vignettes include the usual battling lovers and working-class blokes with their tragicomic inner lives. The strangest song is the monologue of a cranky misanthrope who dismisses Einstein, Newton, van Gogh and Charlie Parker — shorthand for every major artist and scientist who ever lived. The most profound song is the minimalist life-and-death meditation "First Breath."

LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III: "So Damn Happy" (Southbury). "Much Better Bets," the most biting new comic song on a live album that blends recent compositions with old favorites, sarcastically concludes that the only true love to be found in his world comes from pets. Others of the newer songs also find this most astute folkie humorist of the baby boom waxing nostalgic in "Westchester County" and "The Picture." Even in a gentler mode, Mr. Wainwright's reminiscences include one or two barbed insights to make you squirm. In getting his own number, he gets ours, too.

RON ISLEY: "Here I Am: Isley Meets Bacharach" (Dreamworks). Ron Isley, a founding member of the Isley Brothers and a chip off Sam Cooke's pop-gospel block, has recorded an opulent, joyful album of Burt Bacharach songs (11 classics written with Hal David, plus two newer collaborations with Tonio K.). The tempos are markedly slower than in the original recordings by Dionne Warwick and others, and the orchestra, conducted by Mr. Bacharach, glows. The most adventurous number, "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," turns the breezy musical boast from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" into a freedom anthem in the mode of Cooke's "Change Is Gonna Come."

CASSANDRA WILSON: "Glamoured" (Blue Note). As is her way, this loamy voiced pop-jazz-folk singer stretches across many genres to apply her brooding personal stamp to both original songs and nonoriginals, all given spare folk-funk arrangements that underscore the earthiness of her voice. The most memorable cut is a sad, ruminative version of Sting's ballad "Fragile." She makes Abbey Lincoln's great folk-jazz song "Throw It Away" a statement of personal liberation. Although the record is strong and intelligent, it lacks the variety of musical color to be found in Ms. Wilson's two memorable 90's collaborations with the producer Craig Street.

LUTHER VANDROSS: "Dance With My Father" (J Records). Before his nearly fatal stroke, this great pop-soul balladeer made "Dance With My Father," his first album ever to find a fruitful balance between the fluffy, flowery sound of his 80's albums and contemporary hip-hop. If the atmosphere is still charged with romantic possibility, there's usually a beat kicking things along. The title song and best cut, written by Mr. Vandross with Richard Marx, is a touching, detailed personal tribute to Mr. Vandross's father. The most sumptuous cut is his remake with Beyoncé Knowles of the Roberta Flack-Donny Hathaway duet "The Closer I Get to You."

TEITUR: "Poetry and Aeroplanes" (Universal). The songs on the debut album by Teitur, a singer-songwriter from the Faeroe Islands, mingle sweetness and wistful whimsy in a style that suggests early Paul Simon crossed with Stephen Bishop. The airy, gossamer arrangements (produced by Rupert Hine) and dreamy vocals evoke the reveries of a romantic troubadour musing out loud as he travels the world. Best songs: "Sleeping With the Lights On" and "I Was Just Thinking."

SEAL: "Seal IV" (Warner) Although the fourth album by this British pop-soul singer reteams him with the producer Trevor Horn, whose dense quasi-symphonic arrangements placed the singer on an oracular pedestal, that sound has been sharpened on their fourth collaboration. Seal's post-hippie sensibility is still rooted in a 70's one-world-living-in-peace ethos typified by the catchy, inspirational "Get It Together."

KENNY LOGGINS: "It's About Time" (All Time Best Records). The best songs on "It's About Time," an ambitious midlife summing-up, are three churning ballads the singer wrote with Richard Marx. "With This Ring" is a grand, heartfelt wedding song; "I Miss Us" a man's lament to his wife that the romantic idyll of their courtship has been pre-empted by children; and "The One That Got Away" a father's poignant plea for understanding and forgiveness to an angry son from a previous relationship. On all three, Mr. Loggins's air of eager sincerity, which sometimes borders on the mawkish, rings true.