COLE COMFORT

When pop megastar Lady Gaga and veteran crooner Tony Bennett announced their second collaborative long-player, there were mutterings of 'career realignment' and cynical observations about Ms G hitch-hiking on the nonagenarian’s legendary status. But those objections clearly came from mouths whose ears had not listened with any generosity to their collaborations. The grooves of Love For Sale (2021) are as rich with goodwill and warmth as the arrangements are with tasteful strings and brass flourishes. It is a perfect winter warmer of an album, something to cosy up to with a tumbler of fine Scotch whiskey and forget how dreary the real world is.

Choosing well from the Cole Porter songbook, Bennett and Gaga deliver an undemanding yet utterly charming album that serves as a poignant yet ultimately joyous tribute to one of the twentieth century’s great voices. Although it is only just over a month since Tony Bennett made his final curtain call and entered the great night club in the sky, his status and venerable age—he was 4 years short of a well played century when the spotlights dimmed—allow us to celebrate his career while enjoying the evergreen nature of these songs.

As for Lady G, she demonstrates that her early jazz training was neither wasted nor forgotten. Her phrasing is crisp but never forced while the slightly raised eyebrow one can hear in her delivery of lyrics as old as her singing partner shows both an awareness of the passage of time and a deep respect for the songwriting craft. Take her solo spot on "Let’s Do It". Lady tip-toes through the intro only to leap into the song-proper. Her restrained whoop cueing a neat organ solo may have been rehearsed but conveys a love of these tunes. And they are great tunes. "I Get A Kick Out Of You", "Night And Day", "Love For Sale"… this is classic stuff from the American Songbook.

Day and night, why is it so

That this longing for you follows wherever I go?

In the roaring traffic's boom

In the silence of my lonely room

I think of you night and day

[Night And Day]

As is de rigueur with vocal jazz-pop albums of this nature, the vocals are front and centre. And rightly so; the lyrics may sometimes seem quaint but are never clunky. There is a reason jazz aspirants still cut their teeth on these songs.

In shallow shoals, English soles do it

Goldfish in the privacy of bowls do it

Let’s do it, let’s fall in love

[Let’s Do It]

Instrumentally speaking, the arrangements are so highly polished you need shades, while the liberal sprinkling of short but enjoyable solos (guitar, vibes, sax all feature) don’t attempt to attack the tunes so much as sip a cocktail with them. It’s like the twentieth century never ended.

But it did, of course, even though Tony Bennett paid no heed to changes in style or musical fashion. Alex Pertridis, writing in The Guardian (September 2021) put it beautifully. "It’s fitting that an artist so resistant to pop trends says goodbye by allowing a huge contemporary star into his world, rather than vice versa."

There is much joy to be found in the world Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga created together.

© Bruce Jenkins—August 2023