BRENDA LEE: LET ME SING (1963)
1) Night And Day; 2) The End
Of The World; 3) Our Day Will Come; 4) You're The Reason I'm Living; 5) Break
It To Me Gently; 6) Where Are You; 7) When Your Lover Has Gone; 8) Losing You;
9) I Wanna Be Around; 10) Out In The Cold Again; 11) At Last; 12) There Goes My
Heart.
No conceptual foundation this time, but no
significant difference, either, except for a minor tactical twist: other than
the opening ʽNight And Dayʼ and maybe just one or two other oldies, the
majority of the songs come from recent success stories — Bobby Darin, Skeeter
Davis, those kinds of people. If anything, though, it only means that polite,
Disney-ish ballads occupy the space that could
have been dedicated to fun retro jazz romps: if Brenda Lee is prohibited to
sing rock'n'roll, she could have at least been warming our hearts with some of
that old swing. But Let Me Sing is targeted
exclusively at «respectable parents» circa 1963, and no one else.
Already sickening strings are now joined, on at
least a third of the songs, by the greatest evil of all — croony backup vocals
that successfully recreate the atmosphere of Bambi: nineteen fourty-two all over again (ʽYou're The Reason I'm
Livingʼ, ʽThere Goes My Heartʼ, etc.). Brenda herself sounds strong and
confident in the midst of all this sugarland, but strength and confidence are
wasted on this kind of material with these kinds of arrangements. Besides, many
of these songs are not even intended to be sung with strength and confidence —
if there is a substantial point to a
song like ʽBreak It To Me Gentlyʼ, it is pretty much lost on the singer. If
somebody asked me in that particular way to «break it to me
gently», I'd rather run and hide.
Anyway, the two oldies that open the two sides
of the LP (ʽNight And Dayʼ, ʽWhen Your Lover Has Goneʼ) preserve some of the
playful fun, and are altogether acceptable, if dispensable. The rest is mainly
just awful songs in awful arrangements, sung by a singer who was not born to
sing this kind of material, period. Another thumbs down, of course — don't
let anyone fool you into suggesting that «time has been kind to this stuff...».
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