People nearly didn’t make the cut for Funny Girl until Streisand sang it at a preview to rapturous response. It was certainly good enough: Michel Legrand’s melody is beautiful, the orchestral arrangement sumptuous, Streisand’s performance impassioned. The Way He Makes Me Feel might have won an Oscar for best original song had the vote not been split with a nomination for Papa Can You Hear Me?, another song from Streisand’s directorial debut, Yentl. Neil Diamond wrote and recorded it – weirdly, given its dolorous tone, for a sitcom – Streisand covered it, and a Kentucky radio programme director spliced the two versions together while in the throes of divorce and began broadcasting it: 70s weepy ballad history was made. You Don’t Bring Me Flowers had a bizarre genesis. Neil Diamond and Streisand recording You Don’t Bring Me Flowers. Shake Me, Wake Me (When It’s Over) (1975)īuried on 1975’s Lazy Afternoon is the improbable, but delightful sound of Streisand taking on Philadelphia International-style mid-70s dancefloor soul: big orchestration, wah-wah guitars, backing vocals with a distinct hint of the Three Degrees about them (check out the When Will I See You Again-esque sighs at the start). Not all Streisand’s 70s rock covers worked – her version of Life on Mars moved David Bowie to complain – but her version of John Lennon’s infamous wail of misery is frankly amazing: ditching the original’s primal-scream-inspired howling, bringing in an orchestra and gospel organ, and somehow retaining its emotional punch. Left in the Dark is relatively restrained by Steinman’s standards but is still a riot of booming drums and choral backing vocals with a killer power ballad at its centre. Streisand and Meat Loaf producer/songwriter Jim Steinman should have been a match made in theatrical AOR heaven, but she only worked with him once.
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