Description
Label review.
1973 album with 4 bonus tracks. The album is considered a milestone in Minnelli’s recording career as it is her only studio album to reach the Top 40 on the US Billboard 200 Chart. The album also peaked at number 45 on the UK Album Chart.
Our Overview.
Liza Minnelli was considered hot property when Columbia signed her in 1972, off the back of her cracking performance in the film ‘Cabaret’. It was hoped that her recording career might now take off after this starring role and not many people were aware that she had already released six albums between 1964 and 1970 for Capitol and then A&M Records. When Liza went into the recording studio in late 1972 to record “The Singer”, there was an air of expectation that it might be the album to finally kick-start her recording career to the same pinnacles of success that she’d attained as both an actress and as a live performer.
The title track, ‘The Singer’, is very much in the performative vein of the “Cabaret” songbook and there is also a sense of Liza’s acting prowess in her dramatic delivery of both the Lobo written track ‘I’d Love You To Want Me’ and the James Taylor penned ‘Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight’; in both songs she deftly reverses the sex of the narrator from that of the original versions. To this end, these renditions stand out from the remainder of the album in that the other tracks are all Liza’s own take on, or cover versions of, an array of contemporaneous singer-songwriters.
Other songwriters of the day also had their wares covered on this album: Stevie Wonder, Bill Withers, Mac Davis and Carly Simon all were given Liza’s treatment. This remastered expanded edition comes with a fully illustrated booklet containing period portraits by celebrated photographer Terry O’Neill as well as an introductory essay and four bonus tracks. Three of these tracks compile Liza’s recordings of songs from Kander & Ebb’s stage musical ‘Chicago’; their follow-up to the wildly successful “Cabaret”.