The Broadway Album

Production

Barbra Streisand started her career on Broadway, and so considered this in sense returning to her roots, after two decades of recording popular music of the day. She considers the tracks music she has great respect for, deeming it some of the best music and lyrics ever written. The lead single, Putting It Together from Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George, was rewritten to be about the dichotomy between art and commerce in the music industry. Barbra hired her previous The Way We Were director Sydney Pollack, as well as David Geffen, head of Geffen Records to play the parts of the antagonistic studio heads. Barbra wanted to record the entire piece live to capture the atmosphere of Broadway shows. Many of the musicians also played in Funny Girl 22 years before, and a month of rehearsals with Stephen Sondheim was undertaken before recording.

Reception and accolades

In 1993, Entertainment Weekly looked back nostalgically on the album as "the work of a supreme singer-actress still unspoiled enough to fall in love with the characters she sings". Writing at the time of the release, Rolling Stone took a slightly more cynical view, although after criticizing the album for its self-consciousness and overproduction, reviewer Francis Davis did concede that the album "works somehow, if only as a reminder of what a neglected wealth of riches Broadway offers and what a marvelous singer Streisand is when she's not trying to pass herself off as a rock star". New York Times reviewer Stephen Holden, once himself with Rolling Stone, had no such reservations, declaring shortly after the album's release that Streisand had "just released what may be the album of a lifetime". The album was ranked #37 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the '100 100 GREATEST CDS ', the fourth highest album by a female artist to appear on the list.

The album reached #1 on the "Billboard 200" chart in 1986, selling 218,000 copies in that week and earned Streisand a Grammy Award for "Best Female Pop Vocal Performance". It launched two successful singles. "Send in the Clowns", from A Little Night Music, reached #25 on the "Adult Contemporary" chart. "Somewhere", a song from West Side Story, reached #5 on "Adult Contemporary" and also earned a Grammy for producer David Foster for "Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)/Best Background Arrangement". According to the liner notes of Barbra's retrospective box set: Just for the Record, the album also received a record certification in Australia.

Track listing

1. "Putting It Together" (Stephen Sondheim) – 4:20
2. from Sunday in the Park with George
3. "If I Loved You" (Oscar Hammerstein II, Richard Rodgers) – 2:38
4. from Carousel
5. "Something's Coming" (Leonard Bernstein, Sondheim) – 2:55
6. from West Side Story
7. "Not While I'm Around" (Sondheim) – 3:29
8. from Sweeney Todd
9. "Being Alive" (Sondheim) – 3:23
10. from Company
11. "I Have Dreamed"/"We Kiss in a Shadow"/"Something Wonderful" (Hammerstein, Rodgers) – 4:50
12. from The King and I
13. "Adelaide's Lament" (Frank Loesser) – 3:25 (CD Bonus Track)
14. from Guys and Dolls
15. "Send in the Clowns" (Sondheim) – 4:42
16. from A Little Night Music
17. "Pretty Women"/"The Ladies Who Lunch" (Sondheim) – 5:09
18. from Sweeney Todd/Company
19. "Can't Help Lovin' That Man" (Hammerstein, Jerome Kern) – 3:31
20. from Show Boat
21. "I Loves You, Porgy"/"Porgy, I's Your Woman Now (Bess, You Is My Woman)" (George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, DuBose Heyward) – 4:35
22. from Porgy and Bess
23. "Somewhere" (Bernstein, Sondheim) – 4:56
24. from West Side Story

Bonus track

13. "I Know Him So Well" [Session outtake] (Tim Rice, Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus) – 4:14
14. from Chess

Personnel

Production