Streisand sings Alan and Marilyn Bergman

Listening to What Matters Most, the new CD by Barbra Streisand makes me glad that she decided to forego retirement. No one sounds like Streisand and this new album shows her at her best. Yes, I say at her best, because this vocal wonder hits such wonderful notes and makes the simplest of words divine. And words set to beautiful melodies is what this album is all about.

She opens with one word, Round. Just one, sang with no accompaniment and the listener is instantly mesmerized. I am reminded of an article by Zachary Woolfe that I read in the New York Times titled Charisma, A Gift From The Musical Gods: “There are people who try to manufacture charisma by overacting or choosing music that goes very fast or very high, people who attempt to fascinate with technique; but someone who is truly charismatic is riveting from the start.”

And Streisand is riveting. She continues on to “like a circle in a spiral/ like a wheel within a wheel/ never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel/ like a snowball down a mountain or a carnival balloon/ like a carousel that’s turning/ running rings around the moon/ like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face/ and the world is like an apple/ whirling silently in space/ like the circles that you find,” all a capella up to this point, when the reeds and the strings come in. Wow! And the song is just as riveting as the singer

It is The Windmills Of Your Mind. First heard in the soundtrack of the movie The Thomas Crown Affair, it won the Academy Award for Best Song in 1968. The music is by Michel Legrand and those wonderful lyrics that amazingly capture the circular movement of a windmill are by the husband and wife team of Alan and Marilyn Bergman. A lot of time has passed since I first heard the song but I still marvel at those words. And time now to double the superlatives because Streisand has recorded Windmills and produced this CD of songs by the Bergmans.

Streisand has already recorded a lot of Bergman lyrics with various composers in the past. She is truly the best interpreter of their works. What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life, The Summer Knows, You Don’t Bring Me Flowers, The Island, After The Rain, How Do You Keep The Music Playing? Papa Can You Hear Me?, Pieces Of Dreams, A Piece Of Sky and all those tunes from the film Yentl and the one that remains so heart-wrenching even after all these years, The Way We Were. Incidentally, the album is dedicated to Sidney Pollack who directed The Way We Were.

Streisand had already recorded 51 Bergman songs when she decided to do this album. But there were still many that she wanted to do like Windmills and the others in the CD. It is a varied selection with only the lyric writers in common. But Streisand is the strong and brilliant thread that holds them together. Her take on each is typically Streisand, more heart than technique. Her tones are deeper, the nuances, richer, the phrasing, so elegant.

Who would have thought she could turn Nice ‘n’ Easy into a seductive invitation after the iconic original by Frank Sinatra or how she could own an unlikely song like So Many Stars, originally by Sergio Mendes & Brazil 66 or make Windmills doubly moving? I am sure you will also love Something New In My Life, Solitary Moon, Alone In The World, The Same Hello The Same Goodbye, That Face and two songs so dear to the hearts of us Pinoys, I’ll Never Say Goodbye (also known as The Promise) and What Matters Most.

There are more Bergman songs out there. Do you think Streisand will ever attempt It Might Be You from Tootsie or I Knew I Loved You from Once Upon A Time In America or Someone In The Dark from E.T.? It will be nice to hear her versions but for the moment, it is only What Matters Most that matters. The CD that will get it out of my player has to be extraordinarily special.

What Matters Most entered the US charts at No. 4. Very good showing at a time when an artist like Streisand must contend with Adele and Kanye and Jay-Z and compilations like Now.

The Top 20 CDs in Billboard magazine’s Top 200 Albums are: The R.E.D. Album by Game; Watch The Throne by Jay-Z and Kanye West; 21 by Adele; What Matters Most by Streisand; Hell On Heels by Pistol Annies; Now 39 by various artists; Tailgates & Tanlines by Luke Bryan; Muppets: The Green Album by various artists; My Kinda Party by Jason Aldean; and Chief by Eric Church.

Torches by Foster The People; 4 by Beyoncé; Born This Way by Lady Gaga; Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons; Hell: The Sequel by Bad Meets Evil; Teenage Dream by Katy Perry; Life At Best by Eli Young Band; Red River Blue by Blake Shelton; Kidz Bop 20 by the Kidz Bop Kidz; and Loud by Rihanna.