Bette Midler - Bette

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Music reviews of Bette

Music Review: Finally, Bette's back with "Bette"
Rating: 5 Stars

The irony is that it took a producer's touch with instrumentation and background vocals to really make Midler's own voice reach its potential. Midler has never been--and has never claimed to be--a Celine Dion in that the effort of her voice alone does not carry an album. Bette is and has always been a performer at heart and if a producer is not wise to this and attempts to display sheer vocal prowess rather than the tenderness and emotion that Midler is so gifted at presenting, he is going to end up with an unimpressive product. On "Bette," Was allows Bette the Performer to take the reins. Her breathy asides and humorous quips on the album's second track, "In These Shoes," save the song from being just another singer's attempt to feebly jump on the Latin bandwagon with a Spanish-inspired diddy. Her throat-glottaled vowels and swallowed breaths make her remake of The Temptations' "Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)," surprisingly, her own.

Midler really covers it all on this album--at least everything that she can cover well (unlike a not-so-successful attempt at rap/hip-hop with "Bathhouse Betty"'s "Big Socks"). The album's opener is a very Burt Bacharach-ish sounding tune "That's How Heartaches Are Made." After venturing into the afore-mentioned Latin sphere, "Bette" eases into a Motown groove with "Just My Imagination" and "Love TKO." Then we get a dose of Bathhouse Bette fun with a Caribbean-themed "Moses," and from her new CBS television series also titled "Bette," the theme song "Nobody Else But You." Of course we get the famous Bette ballads, but they're not so schmaltzy this time out. Track number 3, a gutsy song entitled "God Give Me Strength" is the first slow-tempo song on the album and we don't hit another one till track 8 with the elegantly-styled "Color of Roses." Before we close out with a mellow cover of "Shining Star," we get another memorable ballad, "When Your Life Was Low," and the album version of her first single release "Bless You Child," a dance number that proves that Bette can still boogie with the best of them.

Although she seems to fall prey to her vocal limits at times (such as with the often-excessive vibratto on "God Give Me Strength"), Bette shines as the entertainer we all remember from the first time we saw her tear up a stage, whether it was on one of her myriad television appearances (could it have been as the unforgettable last guest on "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson?") or live in a stadium with thousands of fans. For long-term fans and non-fans alike, "Bette" is a fine sampling of the talents of Bette Midler certain to be a well-chosen addition to any music collection.

Description of Bette

Broadway & Vocalists CDs

• Music > Styles
• Jazz
• Pop