Columbia 40092
Producers: Barbra Streisand, Peter Matz, Richard Baskin, Bob Esty, Paul Jabara, and David Foster
Track listing: Putting It Together / If I Love You / Something’s Coming / Not While I’m Around / Being Alive / I Have a Dream / We Kiss in a Shadow / Something Wonderful / Send in the Clowns / Pretty Women / The Ladies Who Lunch / Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man / I Loves You Porgy / Porgy I’s You Woman Now (Bess, You Is My Woman) / Somewhere
January 25, 1986
3 weeks
Recording an album of songs made popular on the Broadway stage made perfect sense for Barbra Streisand. After all, the singer/actress’s career began in the early ’60s with roles in such musicals as I Can Get It for You Wholesale and Funny Girl. In fact, Streisand’s first charting single, “People”‘ was from the latter.
For The Broadway Album, Streisand drew selections from the some of the most acclaimed musicals of all time, including “Putting It Together” from Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park With George, “If I Loved You” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, “Something’s Coming” and “Somewhere” from Leonard Bernstein and Sondheim’s West Side Story, and “I Loves You Porgy/Porgy, I’s Your Woman Now” from George and Ira Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.
On several tracks, including “Putting It Together,” Streisand and co-producer Peter Matz gave the songs the grand treatment with lush orchestral arrangements. That particular track also featured cameos from filmmaker/actor Sydney Pollack and record mogul David Geffen, who are credited as “actors.” They mimicked the lines Streisand heard from Columbia executives when she first approached them with the idea for The Broadway Album: “Why take chances?,” “It’s just not commercial,” and “It won’t sell.”
Another special guest was Stevie Wonder, who played harmonica on Streisand’s rendition of “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man” from Showboat.
In the album’s liner notes, Streisand thanked Sondheim “for his contribution to this project — and being so open to change, believing as I do, that art is a living, constantly evolving process.”
Possibly the most dramatic interpretation was Streisand’s version of “Somewhere,” which was produced and arranged by David Foster, who also played keyboards and synthesizer on the track.
“I had been involved with her before,” says Foster. “I had played piano on her records and arranged some songs for her and had somewhat of a relationship established with her already. But when the call came to work on The Broadway Album, I was thrilled. When she explained to me that she wanted the song ‘Somewhere’ to sound like it wasn’t created on this planet, that just piqued my interest even more.”
“Somewhere” was the only single released from The Broadway Album and it peaked at a lowly number 43, yet that couldn’t stop Streisand from scoring her sixth Number One album and first chart-topper in five years. The Broadway Album entered the chart on November 23, 1985, at number 59. Ten weeks later, it hit the top spot.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of January 25, 1986
1. The Broadway Album, Barbra Streisand
2. Miami Vice, Soundtrack
3. Heart, Heart
4. Scarecrow, John Cougar Mellencamp
5. Promise, Sade