Barbra Streisand

Shamelessly romantic, sentimental and easy listening. A true guilty pleasure - a double one, no less. Because along with the sheer pleasure of listening, there's the slightly wicked satisfaction of horrifying every musical purist out there. Yet, more than 40 years on, "Guilty", the forbidden fruit born from the meeting of Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb, remains a classic of melodic pop, an evergreen radio staple that refuses to fade, as well as an undisputed bestseller from an artist who, across her sixty-year career, has racked up records galore. It's an equal partnership, it must be said straight away, because the theory that this is "a Bee Gees record with Streisand's voice on top" is glaringly superficial, underselling the weight of the New York star's performances across the album's nine tracks - a record that, incidentally, fits perfectly with her musical history. Even that of the previous year, if we consider that Barbra's first flirtation with disco music dated back to the anthem "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)", sung alongside the mirrorball goddess Donna Summer in 1979.

A star is born

After all, personality has never been in short supply for Barbara Joan Streisand - or "Barbra" to friends, because, as she puts it, "it looks more distinctive". Born in Brooklyn (April 24, 1942) to a Jewish family, she lost her father Emanuel when she was just 15 months old, and later endured a fraught relationship with her stepfather, with whom her mother Diana would have her half-sister Roslyn Kind. It was her mother, a former soprano singer herself, who became the main obstacle to her artistic calling, driven by the same practical streak that had led her to give up the stage for a job as a school secretary. But Barbra, ever since she was a girl, has been unstoppable. She never gave an inch. She performed for the first time in 1960, at a gay bar in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, and was an instant hit. In 1962 she signed with Columbia, and just a year later she'd already won two Grammys for her debut LP ("The Barbra Streisand Album"). From there, she got a taste for it, landing three albums simultaneously in Billboard's pop top ten, right in the thick of rock 'n' roll fever and Beatlemania.

From here on, it's an unstoppable rise. She becomes a Broadway star (“Another Evening with Harry Stoones,” “I Can Get It For You,” and, above all, “Funny Girl”), takes over television with specials and duets alongside Judy Garland, and breaks through in cinema (from Gene Kelly's “Hello Dolly!” to Peter Bogdanovich's “What's Up, Doc?”, from Frank Pierson's “A Star Is Born” to Sydney Pollack's “The Way We Were”). In practice, she sails unscathed through two decades, defying trends and conventions, buoyed by her iron-willed personality as a born diva and by her powerful, intense voice, capable of stamping a song with its own unmistakable mark.

Up at CBS, hordes of songwriters keep jostling for the chance to write songs for her next record. But she already has crystal-clear ideas and a sound in mind, one that leads straight onto the fluorescent tiles of the dancefloor and the new prophets of Bee Gees-branded “Night Fever” disco. Barbra wants the Bee Gees.

Barbra meets Bee Gees

Not that the romantic girl smitten with Robert Redford in “The Way We Were” suddenly wanted to become a dancing queen. Quite the opposite: as noted, she'd already had her fill, and Enough Is Enough was practically her artistic credo. But in the year of our Lord 1980, when Saturday night fever had long since cooled off, there still lingered the bittersweet scent of that magnificent sound, perhaps filtered through a pop lens. And there was certainly no disputing the melodic gifts of the men who'd written dizzying ballads like “How Deep Is Your Love,” “Fanny (Be Tender With My Love),” or, even earlier, “I Started A Joke,” “To Love Somebody” and “Massachusetts.” No, the Bee Gees were perfectly suited to the leap into the post-disco decade.

The decisive meeting takes shape a year earlier. In October 1979, Streisand attends the Bee Gees' concert at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles with her friend Jon Peters. The next day she requests copies of all their albums and sets up a meeting with the trio. At first she tries pitching Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb a few songs she had in the drawer, but after their polite refusal, she asks the three of them to write songs for her instead. “We jumped at the idea,” Barry Gibb will recall. “She'd been my favourite singer ever since I heard her 'People' in Australia.”

The Bee Gees, with the proverbial creative speed they'd already displayed on the soundtrack to “Saturday Night Fever,” immediately churn out five songs, one credited to the whole firm (“Guilty”) and four written by Barry and Robin alone.

Barbra falls for the material and asks to record it together as soon as possible. But there's a small obstacle to overcome by the name of Robert Stigwood. From his headquarters in a pink building in Bermuda, the Bee Gees' hard-nosed manager sets out his terms: three-quarters of the royalties for them, one-quarter for Streisand. At which point the fan momentarily gives way to the businesswoman: “How much for just one?” she asks, narrowing her ice-blue eyes. The question reaches Bermuda and breaks the deadlock: only Barry Gibb will sing with her and co-produce the album (alongside his trusted partners Albhy Galuten and Karl Richardson); for his performances on the duets he'll receive half the royalties, plus full payment for the production. Deal done.

At this point, though, legend has it that Barry Gibb was a touch intimidated by the iron lady he found himself working with. “I knew what a tough character she was, she was such a huge star that she could intimidate anyone,” he'll recall. “I was incredibly nervous and on the verge of backing out, but then my wife told me she'd divorce me if I did!” Gibb also feared Streisand might demand too many changes to the songs (in the end she'll do so only for the most famous one, “Woman In Love”) and that she might end up overpowering him in the duets with her formidable voice (which, inevitably, she will). But in the end he's won over: he writes four more songs with Galuten, the producer of “Saturday Night Fever” (“What Kind Of Fool,” “Never Give Up,” “Make It Like A Memory” and “Carried Away,” the latter later cut from the tracklist and subsequently recorded by Olivia Newton-John), also digging up “The Love Inside,” a leftover from the 1978 sessions for “Spirits Having Flown.”

The instrumental tracks are recorded at Criteria in Miami, and the vocal parts are then added in Los Angeles. In the studio, everything between Barry and Barbra flows smoothly and in perfect harmony. In total, six months of work for Gibb, two weeks for Streisand. “It increasingly became a joint effort between the two of them, a genuine team effort,” Charles Koppelman, the CBS boss, will later reveal.

Over and over again

“Guilty,” then. Like the title track that opens the album, an anthem to guilty romantic complicity sung as a duet. Not quite an uptempo number, but a song paced by rhythm guitars and embellished with strings, somewhere between funky groove and jazzy shading, with that shift into a minor key in the bridge adding an extra touch of pathos. And the interplay of vocal harmonies between the two works beautifully: sensual and acrobatic Barbra soaring to great heights, while Barry plays a shrewd supporting role, alternating a more subdued delivery with his trademark falsetto. A kind of perfect blueprint for the romantic duet, one subjected to countless (and more or less successful) attempts at imitation: it will even win a Grammy for “Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal” in 1981.

The album's only other duet, “What Kind Of Fool,” tries to recapture the magic at a slower pace, unfurling a cheek-to-cheek slow number that dances dangerously close to schmaltz, getting away with it thanks to an exquisitely delicate melody, backed by the typical Bee Gees-style choruses and by another soaring, building performance from Streisand, here in more Broadway-flavoured mode.

Having pulled off the toughest task (the duets), Gibb hands the microphone over to Streisand for the rest of the album, settling into the control room and dropping in just a few vocal touches here and there. And it's a triumph, starting with the most controversial track, the one for which the New York diva had asked for changes. “The only song I didn't feel entirely comfortable singing was 'Woman In Love',” she'll explain. “I thought the lyrics weren't something I could say.” In particular, it's the line “It's a right I defend / Over and over again” that strikes her as too forceful and “combative” for a pop song. But in the end she's won over by the song's overall magnificence. And she won't regret it. Chosen as the album's first single, “Woman In Love” will become her biggest hit, spending three weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 and dominating radio airplay in every corner of the globe from here to eternity. Credit goes to that irresistible guitar intro and the aching melodic opening crafted by a Gibb at the peak of his powers, but also to Streisand's sumptuous performance, masterly in balancing melancholy in the bridge with fervour in the chorus (where that very controversial line becomes pivotal), in a dazzling vocal interplay with the Gibb-branded backing choruses. And, just to leave the competition eating dust, true diva that she is, she conjures up that note held for ten seconds (on the word “all” in the line “I stumble and fall / But I give you it all”), with which — according to Casey Kasem, host of the radio show American Top 40 — she'll set the record for the “longest note ever held by a female singer on a number-one song” (!). Virtuoso flourishes aside, what remains is the sheer, absolute beauty of a ballad that makes shimmering melodiousness its added value, one destined, almost miraculously, to recapture that same enchantment with every listen.

Anyone who thought the album ended there would be missing out on plenty more. Because the remaining six tracks are a pure distillation of the Bee Gees' most celebrated pop craftsmanship. Take a feat like “Promises,” sinuously funky, with Barbra's vocals now more relaxed and seductive, repeatedly underpinned by Barry's vocals, including his unmistakable falsetto, and by Steve Gadd's precise drumming: a plausible outtake from any Gibb brothers masterpiece you'd care to name. Or the radiant ballad “Run Wild,” which unfolds into another dizzying melodic opening, handled with perfect control by a vocal performance that's simultaneously daring and measured to the millimetre. An iron fist in a velvet glove, Barbra takes centre stage, filling the frame with soft guitars, strings and backing vocals all at her disposal. Even the only track not written specifically for her, the atmospheric “The Love Inside,” shines with its elegant vocal chiaroscuro laid over a soft blanket of synths and strings, giving life to another aching love song.

Even when venturing into bolder territory, Streisand confirms her absolute vocal command and refined eclecticism. Just listen to the circling music-hall sway of “Life Story,” the dance novelty of “Never Give Up” — where she ranges from a whispered bridge to the highest leaps of the chorus — and the more than seven minutes of the mini-symphony “Make It Like A Memory,” which closes the album with an unexpected electric guitar solo (courtesy of Pete Carr) and a polished brass orchestra, in a kind of ideal theatrical farewell straight out of a Broadway show. Curtain down, applause. Actually, a standing ovation.

Global superdiva

Built to be a bestseller (“We wanted to get her more into the mainstream and sell more records than she ever had before,” in Gibb's own words), “Guilty” would achieve exactly that, selling over 12 million copies worldwide and topping the charts in many countries, including Italy (the magic wouldn't be replicated, however, 25 years later, by “Guilty Pleasures,” a lackluster sequel that reunited the pair for eleven new tracks, including new duets – “Come Tomorrow” and “Above The Law” – and the single “Stranger In A Strange Land,” a protest song against the Iraq war).

Mission accomplished, then, for Barry Gibb, who would repeat the feat two years later at the service of the divine Dionne Warwick (with the splendid “Heartbreaker”) and, on a slightly smaller scale, in 1985 working for another stellar diva, Diana Ross, on the album “Eaten Alive.” A slow decline would follow, eventually leading to the demise of the glorious Bee Gees name, of which Barry remains, to this day, the sole survivor.

Barbra Streisand, meanwhile, would cement her status as an eclectic, all-devouring superstar – singer, actress, director, producer, as well as a passionate LGBT activist and Democratic Party supporter – pocketing the most prestigious honors an artist could hope for: 2 Oscars, 10 Grammy Awards, 5 Emmys, 11 Golden Globes and 1 special Tony Award, enough to place her in that exclusive circle of figures known as EGOT (from the initials of the awards), who over their careers have won all the most prestigious prizes given in film, television and music. In 2015, Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House, the highest honor in the United States, where Barbra also holds the incredible record of being the only artist to have at least one number-one album in six consecutive decades, starting in the 1960s (the first in 1964, the most recent in 2016).

So, on the eve of turning eighty, the eternal Woman in Love can offer this brief, telling summary: “In over half a century of career, I've never had to compromise and I've always been myself. I even made it to Hollywood without having to fix my nose, my teeth or my name. I find that very gratifying.” Chapeau!

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07/05/2023