Dionne Warwick - My Friends & Me
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CD Details
Artist: Dionne WarwickEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 2006-11-07
Music Label: Concord Records
Soundtracks:
- Walk On By
- Message To Michael
- Close To You
- I'll Never Love This Way Again
- Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head
- Deja Vu
- I Say A Little Prayer
- Anyone Who Had A Heart
- Then Came You
- Wishin' And Hopin'
- Love Will Find A Way
- The Windows Of The World
- Do You Know The Way To San Jose
Music reviews of My Friends & Me
Music Review: A defense for Dionne ... and some honest criticism.
Rating: 2 Stars
The reviews of this CD have been mixed, and deservedly so. I don't think many of Dionne's fans were looking forward to this product in the first place, other than for the prospect of finally getting something new by Ms. Warwick. Her constant re-hashing of her old hits (particularly the Bacharach/David catalog) is getting old, and I wish she'd stop. As far as I can tell, no one is really interested in these re-workings. The originals stand on their own as some of the best music ever recorded, so the remakes inevitably pale in comparison. In addition, the duets concept is definitely stale. I think most of us fans want to hear Dionne sing new songs that suit her reserved alto voice, with mature, subtle, acoustic arrangements that compliment her mature style. Her Christmas album from a couple years ago was a good example of the way that Dionne's voice should be framed these days.
Which brings me to my next point. We have been hard on Dionne for the cheap production values evidenced on this CD. True, this thing sounds like cheap kareoke. But I don't think it's really Dionne's fault. The kind of sophisticated production we yearn for--Quincy Jones, Burt Bacharach, full orchestra, etc.--costs a lot of money. Record companies advance artists money to fund their records, and that money goes against any royalties the artist might receive. If the artist can record the album for less than the advance, then that is money she gets to keep. Conversely, if the artist goes over-budget, then that money counts against her royalties until the company recups the advance. If the album doesn't sell, everybody goes in the hole. The point of this is that Dionne and the record companies are shrewd enough to project what Dionne's likely sales will be for any given product, and they know how much money to allot for a Dionne project. If they or Dionne want to make any money at all, given the realities of Dionne's current fan base, then the product has to be recorded on the cheap. That probably explains why Damon took the lead and why this thing sounds so amateurish. It was a budget project, and Dionne and Concord are probably just hoping to make some modest returns.
The irony of it all is that if Dionne keeps putting out cheap sounding products like this, no one will want to buy any future releases. And, if no one is buying her records, no record company will give her the kind of budget she needs to make the kind of album that I'm sure she and her fans want. It's a vicious cycle. Low sales projections = low budget. Low budget = low sales. So the best thing we can do for Dionne and ourselves now is to buy up these disappointing CD's she's been making lately (with the exception of the Christmas CD, which sounds very nice), with the hopes that sales will be strong enough to give the record companies the confidence to put up more money for her to make a REAL recording that reflects her talent in her twilight years.
With that said, I now turn to what IS Dionne's fault about this project: her poor singing. She simply does not sing well this time out. I know that Dionne is capable of better singing than she pulls off on this CD. I have seen and heard countless examples of Dionne really singing well of late: recent clips on youtube, good concert reviews, the Christmas CD from 2004, the live CD from a year before that, fan accounts, etc. Dionne can still sing her pants off when she wants to. It sounds like she wasn't even trying on this one. Her voice sounds tired, her pitch is everywhere (I can't even listen to "Love Will Find A Way" because she's so flat), and the duets are uninspired. We waited for several years for this project, and I think the least she could do is record the songs on a good day! I know I probably sound harsh, but I resent the fact that she didn't have enough respect for her fans to give her very best for this long-awaited project. It makes me angry to think what some warming up, throat spray, and maybe a few re-takes would have done here. We deserve better.
Despite all of our unenthusiastic reviews, please buy this CD so that maybe we can get Dionne's sales strong enough to justify to the record companies the kind of budget Dionne needs to record a high quality record. And Dionne, if you're listening, PLEASE give your all next time! You are hurting your legacy when you step up to the mic and don't deliver. And, for the love of God, leave the old songs alone, ditch the duets idea, and give us something original and fresh.
Description of My Friends & Me
As part of the celebration of her 45th year in show business, legendary vocalist Dionne Warwick is revisiting some of her most legendary hits on My Friends and Me, an album of duets with a stellar lineup of female performers including Gladys Knight, Olivia Newton-John, Mya, Gloria Estefan, Kelis, Reba McEntire, Cyndi Lauper, Celia Cruz, Wynonna Judd, Cheyenne Elliott, Lisa Tucker, Deborah Cox, Chante Moore, Angie Stone and Da Brat.Bringing 13 classic songs by famed songwriting team Burt Bacharach and Hal David up to date with cutting-edge production by her son, acclaimed producer Damon Elliott (Barry White, Destiny's Child, Pink, Eminem, Keith Sweat, Jessica Simpson), My Friends and Me offered Warwick a unique opportunity to present timeless material in a timely fashion--and to, as she put it, "hang out with the girlfriends.""It's something I've been trying to get done for several years," Warwick says of the project. "I decided to celebrate my 40th year in the business with a world tour, which we're still on after almost four years. The object was to visit every continent, country and city that I've performed in during my career. It was a brilliant idea at the time!"Over the course of this global odyssey, Warwick signed with Concord and came up with the idea of the duets album featuring contemporary female vocalists and began reaching out to potential collaborators. The singer's extraordinary reputation ensured a surfeit of eager participants.Knight, who sang on Warwick's Grammy-winning 1986 smash (and invaluable AIDS research fundraising tool) "That's What Friends Are For," joins her for a powerful reading of "I'll Never Love This Way Again," while Newton-John guests on a bouncy interpretation of "Wishin' and Hopin'." R&B siren Mya lends her pipes to "Close to You," Kelis jumps in for "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head," Estefan co-croons "Walk on By," Cruz helps point the way to "San Jose" and Cox, Moore, Stone and Da Brat help Warwick bring the socially conscious "Windows of the World" up to date, with Da Brat rapping about Iraq, Katrina and other controversial issues. More Dionne Warwick  The Dionne Warwick Collection: Her All-Time Greatest Hits |  The Definitive Collection |  Greatest Hits 1979-1990 |
Any megawatt artist with four decades of music-making behind her deserves the chance to cut loose once in a while. But in Dionne Warwick's case, the sense of playfulness and artistic abandon (that has served old-school contemporaries such as Bettye LaVette well) doesn't necessarily suit her longtime fans. Classics like "Walk on By" and "Do You Know the Way to San Jose," the consensus goes, ought not to be sullied with new voices or older ones no longer in their prime. That's one way of looking at My Friends & Me. Another way is as a chance to get to know Dionne in her golden years: The seasoned diva's vocal chords may not be as resilient as fellow senior scenesters Tony Bennett's or Gladys Knight's, but they're still unmistakably her honey-smoked own (check "Deja Vu"). And her son, the producer Damon Elliott, may not suffuse each track with Bacharach-style melancholy, but his bag of tricks is not without tenderness and sophistication. Cyndi Lauper warms to it best; "Message to Michael" drapes its Kentucky bluebird in sweet yearning. Elsewhere, Warwick is content to step aside and let future legends strut through her catalog with their newfangled stuff: "The Windows of the World," featuring Angie Stone, Chante Moore, Deborah Cox, and most memorably Da Brat, dispenses almost entirely with Warwick, not to mention formality, and fast-forwards its social commentary to 2006. Groan at the mid-song rap if you will, but its content--misplaced as it may be on a Dionne Warwick disc--redeems it. And so it goes with the rest of this record. If you're not too to traditional-minded to roll with it, you should.--Tammy La Gorce
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