Anne Murray Duets: Friends & Legends
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CD Details
Performer: Anne MurrayPerformer: Celine Dion
Performer: Nelly Furtado
Performer: Olivia Newton-John
Performer: Carole King
Edition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2008-01-15
Music Label: Manhattan Records
Product features:
- MURRAY ANNE DUETS: FRIENDS & LEGENDS
- Danny's Song
- I Just Fall In Love Again
- Another Pot O' Tea
- Daydream Believer
- Somebody's Always Saying Goodbye
- Song For the Mira
- Time Don't Run Out On Me
- Cotton Jenny
- A Love Song
- You Needed Me
- Nobody Loves Me Like You Do
- You Won't See Me
- Could I Have This Dance
- A Little Good News
- Snowbird
- When I Fall In Love
- Si Jamais Je Te Revois (If I Ever See You Again)
Music reviews of Anne Murray Duets: Friends & Legends
Music Review: Anne Murray + 23 great women = 1 SENSATIONAL smash return!
Rating: 5 Stars
Beware: This will be long, but Anne Murray's been away for quite a while, and she's created a masterpiece that deserves to be properly observed and admired - track by brilliant track (all 17 of them). Or, you could just take the fast answer that it's FANTASTIC, and you should absolutely get this CD pronto. Now, where was I?
What an amazing, inspired return Anne Murray has created with her new CD, Anne Murray Duets: Friends & Legends. Anne has been away from the limelight for a good number of years now, but in the U.S. alone, for the week ending February 2, 2008, this CD was the second-highest debuting album on Billboard's Top 200 Albums chart (coming in at #42), along with debuting at #8 on the Top Country Albums chart and at #3 on the Top Internet Albums chart. "Duets" is already her highest-charting U.S. album since 1999.
She's taken a cue from Barbra Streisand, Tony Bennett, and Reba McEntire in recording a "duets" album (although Reba's CD was released only a couple of months earlier than Anne's) - live, in the same studio with her partner(s) - in this case, either in Toronto, Nashville, or L.A. Anne has joined with a group of 23 very diverse women to create 17 superb and lovely tracks, revisiting many of her biggest hits and also some of the songs she's recorded over the years that were special to her fellow Canadians.
The liner notes in this CD are fascinating and full of intriguing information. In addition to interesting facts, in most cases both artists offer impressions of their experiences recording the track or a special significance the song may have had on them. These are some of the finest liner notes I've seen in a CD in years. Anne's partners truly represent an international cast: seven fellow Canadians and seven more from the U.S., six from Ireland, two from the United Kingdom, and one from Australia. Some are established superstars, others are up-and-coming artists, and still another is actually a deceased legend.
Both of Anne's big Kenny Loggins' hits are here: "Danny's Song," with Nashville's fabulous Martina McBride (making up for her dreary 2007 Christmas album); and "A Love Song," with k.d. lang (from Alberta and yes, the spelling of her name is correct). Martina and Anne open the CD with a strong and beautiful country pairing that definitely helps one recall Murray's stellar original. But k.d.'s voice, as always, is "like buttah." It's virtually aural silk. She can easily sing as smoothly as if she were this generation's Karen Carpenter: so gloriously, stunningly beautiful. (It's no wonder she's Tony Bennett's favorite duet partner.) Her pairing with Murray is utterly goose-pimply, or as we say in Hawaii, "like chicken skin awreddy!" Their track, "A Love Song," is by far one of the strongest on the CD. This writer has his own "Constant Craving" for k.d. lang's singular voice, and it was made to blend with Murray's. What a beautiful track.
Another is the duet with Anne Murray's daughter, Dawn Langstroth, an excellent singer in her own right who is on the rise in popularity in Canada. She is also accompanying her mom on Anne's current tour and is performing with her, including their duet from this CD. This tour, announced in October 2007, is reportedly her last (she is 62 years old as of the date of this review). However, the announcement was made prior to the album's release in the late autumn in Canada and this winter in the U.S. The CD's surprise (and welcome) success has required Murray to add many additional performances throughout Canada and the U.S., so perhaps she might change her mind. Langstroth and Murray re-interpret "Nobody Loves Me Like You Do" from a lovers' duet into a quite different one - between mother and daughter. (The original 1984 single was recorded as a duet with Dave Loggins of 1974's Please Come to Boston fame. Dave Loggins is Kenny's cousin.) The entire song is transformed in meaning, and it soars with emotion and the obvious love that the two share. Langstroth struggled with anorexia nervosa in her recent past, and both she and Anne dealt with their private pain by revealing it very publicly, going on both Canadian and American TV to discuss Dawn's affliction. Their bond literally comes through in this exquisite track that deals with a very different kind of love.
Also excellent is an update of Murray's evocative (and, some claimed, provocative) 1983 hit "A Little Good News" with the equally provocative duo Indigo Girls. The lyrics have been updated to reflect current events and changes in TV news anchors. It's just as compelling in 2008 as it was a quarter-century ago. In fact, Indigo Girls add far more to the song than the original. Simply exceptional.
A truly delightful (if not eerie) treat is the exquisite pairing of Anne with the late British "white soul" songstress, the one and only legendary Dusty Springfield, on "I Just Fall in Love Again." Murray and Springfield were close friends, and as it happened, both singers recorded this song and released it as singles in 1979; Dusty first, Anne shortly thereafter. Springfield's single went nowhere, but Anne's version became one of the biggest hits of her career. The family of Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien (Dusty Springfield's real [and full!] name) gave Anne their blessing in taking Dusty's original 1979 vocal track and digitally inserting it into Anne's recording to create the effect of a duet. To hear Dusty Springfield singing a "new" song in a "duet" with Anne, so beautifully interpreted in Dusty's slightly different take of the song (which Anne follows to close out the song after beginning it with her usual version) is spine-tingling. This track alone is the reason to buy this CD. It's literally that good.
Allister MacGillivray's "Song for the Mira" is a protest folk song first recorded by Murray on her 1982 album "The Hottest Night of the Year." It began as a song of hope and desire for Nova Scotia's longest river (at about 34 miles) that the Mira on Cape Breton Island be left alone. The local residents were seeing their riverside and surrounding area being sold off to wealthy outsiders who were buying the land to build commercial property and seasonal condos for wealthy outsiders on what the locals believed to be their rightful land, to be left in its pristine condition. "Song for the Mira" has since become a veritable anthem for the citizens of Canada's Atlantic maritime provinces, begging for a halt to the continual development, but thus far their song and the people's pleas have fallen on deaf ears. In this CD, however, the pairing of Anne Murray and Irish sextet Celtic Woman is nothing short of heavenly.
"Another Pot o' Tea" is another obscure Murray nugget that she is revisiting, first recorded on her 1974 album "Love Song," which yielded the aforementioned hit "A Love Song." The legendary Emmylou Harris lends her unique voice to this tender, melancholy Gaelic-English folk song. The blend of Harris' voice with Murray's aches with emotion and longing. It's another gem amongst many found on this CD. On the other hand, fellow Canadian Gordon Lightfoot's sunny and bouncy love song "Cotton Jenny" is another possibly little-known track to many Americans who may not be that familiar with some Canadian songwriters' tunes. It was first recorded by Murray on her 1971 LP "Talk It Over in the Morning," and here it's juiced-up with the absolutely welcome return (and lovely voice) of Australia's Olivia Newton-John, whose soprano blends perfectly with Murray's contralto. Olivia plays with the notes and uses her upper register nicely, playing off Anne's lower alto voice, and the up-tempo beat and cheery lyrics make this track one of the most lighthearted of the CD's selections.
Anne never forgets her maternal Acadian ancestry and maintains a display of same at The Anne Murray Centre - a museum that celebrates her life and extraordinary career - in her hometown of Springhill, Nova Scotia. The Acadians were French explorers primarily in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia but who were eventually expelled by the British. They then resettled in the area that would become Louisiana. That is why today's New Orleans, and everywhere in Louisiana, a unique dialect of the Acadian-French language and its culture remain, now also integrated with Creole, Caribbean, and other cultures. This information is provided to explain Anne's French-language duet (closing out the CD) with Quebec singer Isabelle Boulay on "Si Jamais Je Te Revois (If I Ever See You Again)." Murray first recorded this song on her 1991 album "Yes, I Do."
Other tracks include a 1996 live performance culled from a Montreal concert in which Celine Dion joined Anne onstage to duet on "When I Fall in Love." Both singers recorded the song in 1993 - Murray on her album Croonin', and Dion recorded the song for the Sleepless In Seattle: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack as a duet with Britain's Clive Griffin. The Dion/Griffin single reached the Top 25 on Billboard's Hot 100 Singles chart during the same year. While the duet is passable (Dion overpowers Murray, of course) and the audio quality is not exactly overwhelming, the interesting note is that the two never actually rehearsed or performed the song together until the actual concert that evening. Celine sang her part through the speaker of her cellphone with Anne on the other end during the afternoon preceding the concert, but somehow the two pulled it off quite nicely that evening! Now, that's two pros if ever there were any.
Young British Columbia native and quickly-rising pop/rock star Nelly Furtado holds her own on a revved-up version of Anne's "Daydream Believer," one of her all-time biggest hits. Her original 1980 recording was a cover of The Monkees' #1 hit from 1967, featuring Britain's Davy Jones on lead vocal. Alberta's Jann Arden does a superb job in her duet with Anne on "Somebody's Always Saying Goodbye"; it's another standout on the CD. While rather prolific in her native Canada, Arden is best known to Americans as the one-hit wonder behind 1994's hit single Insensitive. She also appears with Murray in the concert DVD An Intimate Evening with Anne Murray (1999). (Celine Dion's live 1996 concert duet performance of "When I Fall in Love" with Murray has also been added to this same DVD.)
Murray insisted that the composer sing the duet with her, and Anne got her way. The legendary Carole King duets with Anne on "Time, Don't Run Out on Me" (co-written with ex-husband and decades-long writing partner Gerry Goffin), one of this writer's personal favorites in Anne's repetoire. Though she's now 66 years old as of the date of this review, King's voice is still strong, powerful, and expressive, and she makes quite a suitable partner for Murray. The one-time Brill Building composer and girlfriend of Neil Sedaka (inspiring him to compose his hit "Oh! Carol"), who went on to record one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, Tapestry, has lost not a whit of her soul and warmth. However, probably my biggest disappointment is Shania Twain's performance on 1978's #1 smash "You Needed Me," the all-time biggest hit of Anne Murray's career and, as the liner notes reveal, Anne's personal favorite song in her repetoire. The Ontario native trades off lines with Murray, yet it comes across as a surprisingly lackluster performance, especially considering that Twain's liner notes reveal that she specifically requested to duet on this song. However, further along in the track, the responses to each other do serve to add a bit of interest to this timeless classic - albeit a tiny bit.
The wattage is turned up on the renewal of Anne's version of "You Won't See Me," also one of Murray's biggest hits. Nashville country singer Shelby Lynne does a fine job of helping Anne pump some fresh, dance-worthy blood into this cover (of a cover) of The Beatles' 1966 song. Anne reveals that the late, great John Lennon told her backstage at the Grammy Awards one year that her original recording of "You Won't See Me" was the best cover version of any Beatles song he'd heard. An avowed Beatles fan who freely uses The Beatles' extensive songbook when recording her albums, she was (and still is) utterly thrilled. And then we have one of the most popular songs played by live country bands everywhere (especially at wedding receptions). The great Amy Grant duets with Anne on her timeless 1980 classic "Could I Have This Dance?" from the Urban Cowboy: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. Like Shania, I was expecting more from Amy, but the duo gets the job done. "Dance" is a simple country waltz, and sometimes the so-called "simple" songs are the most difficult to convey in the recording studio. That's why Anne Murray's soulful and elegant original hit single has stood the test of time and has remained one of her most popular songs (and remains a "must" on her set-list in every concert, even now) after more than a quarter-century.
Finally, talk about a snowbird out of her element! The UK's Sarah Brightman, the ex-wife of theatre composer extraordinaire Andrew Lloyd Webber ("Jesus Christ, Superstar," "Evita," "Cats," "Phantom of the Opera," "Sunset Boulevard," etc.), tries her best to fly away with Anne on the first #1 song of her career, 1970's "Snowbird," the single that launched her into stardom virtually overnight. But Brightman's soaring, high, lilting soprano is so much better suited to operatic and theatrical endeavors, while Anne's contralto just does not blend well with her. Brightman does try hard, though, reaching down as far into her singing register as she possibly can to "meet up" with Murray, because "Snowbird" just happens to be written and/or arranged in the high end of Anne's natural singing voice. Somehow, they got through it. Yet in the liner notes, both singers noted, as politely as possible, the difficulties in getting this track recorded. Still, it's not all that bad. I'm just disappointed that Anne didn't choose to extend the song a little. It still comes in at barely over two minutes, just as the original 1970 single did. With today's tracks regularly clocking in at four minutes plus, I was hoping to hear more of "Snowbird."
With 17 tracks, the listener will get a sample of many of Anne Murray's hits over the last nearly four decades, but there are some glaring omissions. Should she decide to do a second edition, some overlooked hits would need to be included, such as: "Another Sleepless Night," "Broken-Hearted Me," "Just Another Woman in Love," "Blessed Are the Believers," and "Shadows in the Moonlight," just to name a few.
Despite my few complaints, this album still warrants the full five stars (the complaints come from the guests, not Anne Murray). It is absolutely sensational. I have played it over and over again since I bought it, and I'm so pleased with it that I've reawakened my interest in Anne Murray and have purchased a number of other items featuring her - some mentioned above, but also her Anne Murray - What a Wonderful World DVD from 2001 and her An Intimate Evening with Anne Murray CD from 1998 (the audio version of the DVD mentioned above, but with some different track selections).
Ladies and gentlemen, this is Anne Murray's best work in many, many years. You really owe yourself the enjoyment of ANNE MURRAY DUETS: FRIENDS & LEGENDS. I also truly hope that Anne changes her mind about ending her touring, and I can't wait to see what she's going to do next. In a videotaped interview, she thought that her days in the studio were over and wasn't planning on doing any more recording. The commercial and critical success of this fantastic CD proves that such a decision would be an enormous mistake. Pick up this CD and...E N J O Y!
CD RATING: ***** (out of 5) -- 28 Feb 08 -- BOB BOURBEAU
Description of Anne Murray Duets: Friends & Legends
MURRAY ANNE DUETS: FRIENDS & LEGENDSThere's a feeling you get when you put on an Anne Murray record, and--apologies in advance to all you anti-sentimentalists--it's best summarized by the vocal legend herself in the classic tune "I Just Fall in Love Again." You can't help yourself; you fall in love. Those who've been listening along swollen-heartedly since the 1970s know the feeling well, and those who are about to discover Murray via this duets album and its handful of younger-skewing songs--the Nelly Furtado team-up on "Daydream Believer" especially--are going to have a hard time not submitting. It's the tenderness that hooks you: Murray's deep, confident voice manages to be maternal without being claustrophobic, an effect magnified here by expert vocal partners like Carole King, Emmylou Harris, and Olivia Newton John. The few left-field choices--Indigo Girls, k.d. lang, a ghostly appearance by Dusty Springfield--aren't hard-left enough to muck up the mood. And the song selection doesn't strike a false note either: "Cotton Jenny" sounds as right on an Anne Murray CD as "You Needed Me." Which means that if you have a soft spot for Murray at all, even one that's not quite as cushy as it used to be, you should prepare to be sucked in. It happens every time, as the song goes. --Tammy La Gorce
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