The week of August 22, 1964, saw The Supremes atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Where Did Our Love Go,’ a song I featured 15 years ago during Motown Weekends.
At #2 that week was Dean Martin’s ‘Everybody Loves Somebody,’ down a spot after a one-week stint at #1. This was a nearly 20-year-old song that had already been recorded by Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra in the 40s, but Martin had the most success with it and it became his signature tune.
Throwing back to the week of August 21, 1954, we find The Crew Cuts still on top of the charts with ‘Sh-Boom,‘ a doo-wop classic.
In the second spot that week was Rosemary Clooney’s ‘Hey There,’ a show tune from the musical The Pajama Game. Clooney stayed in the #2 spot behind ‘Sh-Boom’ for a month before grabbing #1 for six straight weeks. This was the third of four #1 hits for Clooney, all in the first four years of the 1950s.
Following Love is the Answer, Barbra Streisand’s last 15 years as a recording artist have been unremarkable. She has released just four studio albums during that time, along with several live albums.
2011’s What Matters Most was a tribute to the songs of her friends, lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman. In 2014, Partners was a collection of duets with male singers. That album did well enough to spawn 2016’s Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway, which found Streisand singing show tunes with such unlikely collaborators as Melissa McCarthy, Antonio Banderas, and Alec Baldwin.
I’ve noticed a pattern when digging into the catalogs of major artists. They all seem to have a burst of activity for the first decade or two before tapering off. Maybe it’s because they’re too comfortable to put in the hard work, or perhaps their muse has just run out.
Barbra Streisand is no exception. After averaging more than an album a year for the first 23 years of her career, she hit the brakes. After The Broadway Album in 1985, she released just four more albums before the turn of the millennium.
Barbra Streisand’s output slowed down in the 80s. After averaging more than an album a year since the start of her recording career, she waited four years after 1980’s Guilty to release her next one.
That was Emotion (1984), a return to the middle of the road pop material she put out in the 70s. The album sold decently but earned a collective shrug from critics. Streisand decided it was time to go back to her roots.
Meet Me In Montauk 