Matt Monro Forum

The Times has reviewed Dame Shirley Bassey's forthcoming CD and awarded it 4 stars.

Here's the review:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/ ... 895666.ece

I have high hopes for it and I hope it will shoot to the top of the British charts.

Great review Terence-at the moment, my favourite song is "Where have all the nice men gone"---but there are still lots that I have not heard yet.

Gary Barlow talks in the video about writing his song for Dame Shirley Bassey.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sh ... -song.html

My favourite is 'The Girl From Tiger Bay' written by the guy from The Manic Street Preachers,it is very poignant I thought.
The two songs that Don Black collaborated with need more listening too before I can make up my mind about them

The Girl From Tiger Bay is also going round in my head especially the chorus. It must be the infectious melody cos the Dame does not belt in this one.

For the pathos and the drama, I vote for the song written by the Pet Shop Boys titled "The Performance Of My Life". It describes her life to a T.

The Guardian has also reviewed The Performance:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/no ... nce-review

THis review is the best so far. It shows that the reviewer really took the trouble to listen carefully to all the tracks.
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/feature ... 5785013.jp

My favourite song from the concert was "Almost There". Just beautiful. Can't wait for the album next week.

Here is an interesting article from Music Week with the album track listing. I liked many of these new songs from the concert. Her tender performance of the Richard Hawley song captured me the most as he's one of my favourite current songwriters and the song is in true Hawley style. I also love the Tom Baxter song; another great new songwriter. These songs certainly disprove that popular adage, "they don't write songs like that anymore."

The Performance of a lifetime...

In a career spanning more than 50 years, Dame Shirley Bassey has enjoyed more than 30 hit albums and singles – including such career defining Sixties and Seventies standards as Big Spender and the Bond movie themes Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever. More recently she has guested on cuts by Yello and Propellerheads and covered the Pink hit Get This Party Started. Surprisingly, though, her forthcoming album The Performance, due for a November 9 release on Geffen, is her first featuring all-new material since 1982.

The idea of inviting a selection of today’s top writers to submit titles for a contemporary Dame Shirley collection came to manager Paul Carey after witnessing the then 70-year-old’s triumphant performance at Glastonbury in
2007 – and the Arctic Monkeys’ subsequent cover of Diamonds Are Forever the same weekend.

“Live she clearly connected with people of all ages and tastes and I suddenly realised she could do the same on record with the right songs,” says Carey.

Colin Barlow, then at Polydor but now president at Geffen – and a self-confessed fan of great voices and great songs – agreed on the condition that Bond movie scoremeister David Arnold produce. A single phone call later and the project was on.

Contacting the writers through their managements rather than their publishers, Carey and Barlow had an initial wishlist including the Arctic Monkeys, Elbow and Coldplay, all of whom were regretfully unavailable. But among those who responded with demos were Rufus Wainwright (Warner/Chappell), the Kaiser Chiefs’ Nick Hodgson (Imagem) and a swathe of Sony/ATV writers ranging from Gary Barlow and KT Tunstall to the Manic Street Preachers and Pet Shop Boys.

Providing continuity with the past, lyricist Don Black also teamed up with David Arnold on a Bondesque No Good About Goodbye and renewed his partnership with John Barry on Our Time Is Now.

“Shirley doesn’t sing songs, she bites lumps out of them,” says Black. “I tried to give her something to sing about because she is such a great storyteller.”

Meanwhile, Universal’s Tom Baxter applied a degree of songwriting science to the album’s introspective and emotional scenesetter Almost There.

“When you’re putting forward a song for someone like Dame Shirley you ultimately end up with the old great American songbook,” he says. “So a Bassey song should mix narrative, vulnerability, great melody and chord structure and, most importantly, a good lashing of drama. Then it’s job done.”

On the other hand Universal writer Richard Hawley submitted a deceptively simple but haunting ballad After The Rain, which reportedly moved Bassey to tears during recording at Grouse Lodge Studios in Ireland.

“You should always write what the singer wants, but give something of yourself, too,” says Hawley. “I thought a big bombastic show tune was too obvious so I went for bittersweet beauty instead. After I sent it I feared it was a bit too dark but they flipped.”

Arnold credits the versatility and power of 72-year-old Dame Shirley’s voice for the album’s success.

“There’s something about a Bassey performance that can make you laugh, make you cry, let you in on the joke or be led to a more exotic place,’ he says. “I tried to make a record that made the most of that voice and one that could sit alongside her other classic recordings.”

1 ALMOST THERE Tom Baxter; Universal
2 APARTMENT Rufus Wainwright; Warner/Chappell
3 THIS TIME Gary Barlow; Sony/ATV
4 LOVE YOU NOW Nick Hodgson; Imagem
5 OUR TIME IS NOW John Barry, Don Black; CC, Sony/ATV
6 AS GOD IS MY WITNESS David Arnold, David McAlmont; CC
7 NO GOOD ABOUT GOODBYE David Arnold, Don Black; CC, Sony/ATV
8 THE GIRL FROM TIGER BAY James Dean Bradfield, Nicholas Jones, David Arnold; Sony/ATV, CC
9 NICE MEN KT Tunstall; Sony/ATV
10 AFTER THE RAIN Richard Hawley; Universal
11 THE PERFORMANCE OF MY LIFE Chris Lowe, Neil Tennant; Sony/ATV

Listen to exclusive tracks from Dame Shirley Bassey's new album

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ar ... album.html

I ordered my copy yesterday from Amazon, had a message this afternoon to say it has been dispatched.

How lucky you are John......my copy will only ship on street date which is Nov 9.

Looks like you can listen to the whole album at this link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/no ... erformance

If that is the case, who would want to buy it when you can listen for free?

It arrived this morning! Looks great.

Here's another positive review:

Following her imperious domination of the Electric Proms, the Dame delivers her first full studio album in 20 years, singing songs written specially for her by artists such as Rufus Wainwright, Pet Shop Boys and, a blast from Bassey's Bond-theme past, John Barry. She has recently complained about being labelled as merely a belter and, while there are moments here that justify that description, The Performance also serves as a reminder of Bassey's genius for both phrasing - the key missing ingredient in today's note-perfect but passionless manufactured emoting - and restraint.

Tom Baxter (Almost There) and Gary Barlow (This Time) bring out the doubt beneath the bombast; the former finds Shirl imbuing a word as everyday as "foolish" with multisyllabic grandeur and bittersweet nostalgia, while Barlow's mastery of Sondheimesque escalation is a marriage made in show-stopping heaven. The mid-album trio from Barry, Don Black, David McAlmont and David Arnold lean heavily back to the Bond days, and are the least interesting offerings here. Wainwright (Apartment) and KT Tunstall (Nice Men) home in on Bassey the skittish but regal vamp, while the Manic Street Preachers' The Girl from Tiger Bay is a memory-lane pop beauty. Richard Hawley and PSB, with, respectively, the standouts, After the Rain and The Performance of My Life, bring the curtain down with the remorseful sigh that characterises this superb album's finest moments

The Performance sold 17, 462 copies and made its debut on the charts at no. 20. I expected it to chart higher especially since Get The Party Started entered the charts at no. 6!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/chart/albums/

A fan shared this opinion.......
The sales of "The Performance" were 17,462 and to put that into perspective, it would have been enough to make top 5 just 4 weeks ago. This has been an incredible week for sales where there have been actually more albums sold in the UK than the US.

Here's an article about her career longevity:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/no ... erformance