Anne Murray Duets: Friends & Legends

Anne Murray | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 15, 2008)
• Original Release Date: 2008
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Manhattan Records
• ASIN: B000WW2AGS
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (77 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,485 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #49 in Music > World Music > North America > Canada

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

There's a feeling you get when you put on an Anne Murray record, and--apologies in advance to all you anti-sentimentalists--it's best summarized by the vocal legend herself in the classic tune "I Just Fall in Love Again." You can't help yourself; you fall in love. Those who've been listening along swollen-heartedly since the 1970s know the feeling well, and those who are about to discover Murray via this duets album and its handful of younger-skewing songs--the Nelly Furtado team-up on "Daydream Believer" especially--are going to have a hard time not submitting. It's the tenderness that hooks you: Murray's deep, confident voice manages to be maternal without being claustrophobic, an effect magnified here by expert vocal partners like Carole King, Emmylou Harris, and Olivia Newton John. The few left-field choices--Indigo Girls, k.d. lang, a ghostly appearance by Dusty Springfield--aren't hard-left enough to muck up the mood. And the song selection doesn't strike a false note either: "Cotton Jenny" sounds as right on an Anne Murray CD as "You Needed Me." Which means that if you have a soft spot for Murray at all, even one that's not quite as cushy as it used to be, you should prepare to be sucked in. It happens every time, as the song goes. --Tammy La Gorce

Product Description

2008 collection from the Canadian songbird featuring greatest re-recorded versions of her greatest songs, performed as duets with some of the world's greatest female voices including Nelly Furtado, Martina McBride, Olivia Newton-John, Emmylou Harris, Celine Dion, Amy Grant, Shania Twain and more. 17 tracks.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sigh...so pretty., January 16, 2008

By 

Jeff Pearlman (Lakeland, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Anne Murray Duets: Friends & Legends (Audio CD)

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Anne Murray. Her voice is so warm and comforting. I've always loved the intelligence, independence, and strength she conveys even (especially?) when the songs are about heartbreak and loneliness. On this new CD, her duet partners express their respect and admiration for Anne through their excellent performances (with one exception) as well as their quotes in the liner notes (a couple of the artists are not quoted).

No two reviews will have the same favorite, and mine is no doubt somewhat subjective: I am thrilled to hear my former Emory University schoolmates--Indigo Girls!--sing with Anne on "A Little Good News." I imagine this will be the first time many Anne fans will have heard the wondrous harmonies of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, and I strongly recommend their entire catalog. Fans of the song will notice that Diane Sawyer has replaced Bryant Gumbel in the lyrics, and that Ireland has been replaced by Gaza. Sadly, this song will probably be just as timely in another (damn has it been) 25 years as it was in 1983 and is today.

Another personal favorite of mine has always been "Time Don't Run Out on Me". While I'm thrilled Carole King is on board to sing this with Anne (Ms. King co-wrote it with ex-husband Gerry Goffin), I wish the ladies hadn't slowed the tempo down for their version. The original kinda rocked! I still can't believe it didn't make the pop chart back in the day. (Let it go, Jeff. Just let go of it already.)

All the performances are beautiful. I don't think I've ever heard k.d. lang turn in a performance that isn't flawless. No exception here ("A Love Song"). Shania Twain does a great job with Ms. Murray on the immortal "You Needed Me." I imagine it would have been easy to screw up such a standard. They don't! The one song here that actually was a duet the first time around ("Nobody Loves Me Like You Do", with Dave Loggins) is done here with Anne's daughter, Dawn Langstroth. The song is even sweeter this way than when it was a romantic duet. Aww... It was nice to hear Jann Arden ("Somebody's Always Saying Goodbye") after so long. Someone will need this reminder: Ms. Arden's big U.S. hit was "Insensitive." Pop radio played to death, then never gave anything else from her so much as a spin. (Again. Let it go, he tells himself...) And "Snowbird" is about as far from Andrew Lloyd Webber as Sarah Brightman is likely to get--unless you are familiar with "(I Lost My Heart To A) Starship Trooper". Ms. L-W does brilliantly. I especially enjoyed the liner notes for that one.

I can't not mention Olivia Newton-John, because I love her. "Cotton Jenny" is not my pot o' tea but it's so nice to hear these two icons singing together. Speaking of icons, and getting back to the exception noted above (you thought I forgot about that didn't you), a word about Dusty Springfield. I remember Ms. Springfield's version of "I Just Fall in Love Again" from her criminally-ignored LP "Living Without Your Love" (now available on CD, by the way). This posthumous duet was recorded with "the blessing of the Springfield family and estate". I'm happy that Anne Murray respected Dusty enough to have included her on this CD, but naturally sad that Dusty is no longer with us to have actively participated in the creation of the song as a duet.

I was tempted to make some mischief over this being a ladies-only project. No doubt much of this CD will appeal to the "cult following" I was blissfully unaware of until reading the entry for Ms. M in the 1983 version of "The Rolling Stone Record Guide." But for me, ineligible for that segment of the pop audience, guys' voices would just mess up the pretty. I'm keeping this CD out for a while; like Anne Murray's other LPs & CDs, it's a tonic for troubled times.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is an excellent disc of duets, January 15, 2008

By 

Robert G Yokoyama (Mililani, Hawaii) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Anne Murray Duets: Friends & Legends (Audio CD)

I have been an Anne Murray fan all my life. I grew up listening to her music. I know most of the songs on here but not all of them. My favorite track is "You Needed Me". Anne and Shania Twain sing so well together. I also love her duet with KD Lang. They harmonize great so well on "A Little Love Song". Amother gem is the duet with the late great Dusty Springfield. "I Just Fall In Love Again" is a classic love song. "Snowbird" is a track that makes me feel happy. Sarah Brightman has such a pretty voice. Other tracks that stand out here are "Danny's Song" with Martina McBride and "Another Pot O' Tea" with Emmylou Harris. I never heard of the singer Isabelle Boulay, but she sings beautifully with Anne on the French song "Si Je Te Revois". The piano playing is lovely on this track. I have never heard the song "You Won't See Me", but it is very upbeat. I like the guitar playing here. I love the music of Anne Murray.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Anne Murray + 23 great women = 1 SENSATIONAL smash return!, February 28, 2008

By 

R. Bourbeau "(BOBBY BOURBEAU - MAUITUNES" (Maui, Hawaii, USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Anne Murray Duets: Friends & Legends (Audio CD)

Beware: This will be long, but Anne Murray's been away for quite a while, and she's created a masterpiece that deserves to be properly observed and admired - track by brilliant track (all 17 of them). Or, you could just take the fast answer that it's FANTASTIC, and you should absolutely get this CD pronto. Now, where was I?

What an amazing, inspired return Anne Murray has created with her new CD, Anne Murray Duets: Friends & Legends. Anne has been away from the limelight for a good number of years now, but in the U.S. alone, for the week ending February 2, 2008, this CD was the second-highest debuting album on Billboard's Top 200 Albums chart (coming in at #42), along with debuting at #8 on the Top Country Albums chart and at #3 on the Top Internet Albums chart. "Duets" is already her highest-charting U.S. album since 1999.

She's taken a cue from Barbra Streisand, Tony Bennett, and Reba McEntire in recording a "duets" album (although Reba's CD was released only a couple of months earlier than Anne's) - live, in the same studio with her partner(s) - in this case, either in Toronto, Nashville, or L.A. Anne has joined with a group of 23 very diverse women to create 17 superb and lovely tracks, revisiting many of her biggest hits and also some of the songs she's recorded over the years that were special to her fellow Canadians.

The liner notes in this CD are fascinating and full of intriguing information. In addition to interesting facts, in most cases both artists offer impressions of their experiences recording the track or a special significance the song may have had on them. These are some of the finest liner notes I've seen in a CD in years. Anne's partners truly represent an international cast: seven fellow Canadians and seven more from the U.S., six from Ireland, two from the United Kingdom, and one from Australia. Some are established superstars, others are up-and-coming artists, and still another is actually a deceased legend.

Both of Anne's big Kenny Loggins' hits are here: "Danny's Song," with Nashville's fabulous Martina McBride (making up for her dreary 2007 Christmas album); and "A Love Song," with k.d. lang (from Alberta and yes, the spelling of her name is correct). Martina and Anne open the CD with a strong and beautiful country pairing that definitely helps one recall Murray's stellar original. But k.d.'s voice, as always, is "like buttah." It's virtually aural silk. She can easily sing as smoothly as if she were this generation's Karen Carpenter: so gloriously, stunningly beautiful. (It's no wonder she's Tony Bennett's favorite duet partner.) Her pairing with Murray is utterly goose-pimply, or as we say in Hawaii, "like chicken skin awreddy!" Their track, "A Love Song," is by far one of the strongest on the CD. This writer has his own "Constant Craving" for k.d. lang's singular voice, and it was made to blend with Murray's. What a beautiful track.

Another is the duet with Anne Murray's daughter, Dawn Langstroth, an excellent singer in her own right who is on the rise in popularity in Canada. She is also accompanying her mom on Anne's current tour and is performing with her, including their duet from this CD. This tour, announced in October 2007, is reportedly her last (she is 62 years old as of the date of this review). However, the announcement was made prior to the album's release in the late autumn in Canada and this winter in the U.S. The CD's surprise (and welcome) success has required Murray to add many additional performances throughout Canada and the U.S., so perhaps she might change her mind. Langstroth and Murray re-interpret "Nobody Loves Me Like You Do" from a lovers' duet into a quite different one - between mother and daughter. (The original 1984 single was recorded as a duet with Dave Loggins of 1974's Please Come to Boston fame. Dave Loggins is Kenny's cousin.) The entire song is transformed in meaning, and it soars with emotion and the obvious love that the two share. Langstroth struggled with anorexia nervosa in her recent past, and both she and Anne dealt with their private pain by revealing it very publicly, going on both Canadian and American TV to discuss Dawn's affliction. Their bond literally comes through in this exquisite track that deals with a very different kind of love.

Also excellent is an update of Murray's evocative (and, some claimed, provocative) 1983 hit "A Little Good News" with the equally provocative duo Indigo Girls. The lyrics have been updated to reflect current events and changes in TV news anchors. It's just as compelling in 2008 as it was a quarter-century ago. In fact, Indigo Girls add far more to the song than the original. Simply exceptional.

A truly delightful (if not eerie) treat is the exquisite pairing of Anne with the late British "white soul" songstress, the one and only legendary Dusty Springfield, on "I Just Fall in Love Again." Murray and Springfield were close friends, and as it happened, both singers recorded this song and released it as singles in 1979; Dusty first, Anne shortly thereafter. Springfield's single went nowhere, but Anne's version became one of the biggest hits of her career. The family of Mary Isabel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien (Dusty Springfield's real [and full!] name) gave Anne their blessing in taking Dusty's original 1979 vocal track and digitally inserting it into Anne's recording to create the effect of a duet. To hear Dusty Springfield singing a "new" song in a "duet" with Anne, so beautifully interpreted in Dusty's slightly different take of the song (which Anne follows to close out the song after beginning it with her usual version) is spine-tingling. This track alone is the reason to buy this CD. It's literally that good.

Allister MacGillivray's "Song for the Mira" is a protest folk song first recorded by Murray on her 1982 album "The Hottest Night of the Year." It began as a song of hope and desire for Nova Scotia's longest river (at about 34 miles) that the Mira on Cape Breton Island be left alone. The local residents were seeing their riverside and surrounding area being sold off to wealthy outsiders who were buying the land to build commercial property and seasonal condos for wealthy outsiders on what the locals believed to be their rightful land, to be left in its pristine condition. "Song for the Mira" has since become a veritable anthem for the citizens of Canada's Atlantic maritime provinces, begging for a halt to the continual development, but thus far their song and the people's pleas have fallen on deaf ears. In this CD, however, the pairing of Anne Murray and Irish sextet Celtic Woman is nothing short of heavenly.

"Another Pot o' Tea" is another obscure Murray nugget that she is revisiting, first recorded on her 1974 album "Love Song," which yielded the aforementioned hit "A Love Song." The legendary Emmylou Harris lends her unique voice to this tender, melancholy Gaelic-English folk song. The blend of Harris' voice with Murray's aches with emotion and longing. It's another gem amongst many found on this CD. On the other hand, fellow Canadian Gordon Lightfoot's sunny and bouncy love song "Cotton Jenny" is another possibly little-known track to many Americans who may not be that familiar with some Canadian songwriters' tunes. It was first recorded by Murray on her 1971 LP "Talk It Over in the Morning," and here it's juiced-up with the absolutely welcome return (and lovely voice) of Australia's Olivia Newton-John, whose soprano blends perfectly with Murray's contralto. Olivia plays with the notes and uses her upper register nicely, playing off Anne's lower alto voice, and the up-tempo beat and cheery lyrics make this track one of the most lighthearted of the CD's selections.

Anne never forgets her maternal Acadian ancestry and maintains a display of same at The Anne Murray Centre - a museum that celebrates her life and extraordinary career - in her hometown of Springhill, Nova Scotia. The Acadians were French explorers primarily in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia but who were eventually expelled by the British. They then resettled in the area that would become Louisiana. That is why today's New Orleans, and everywhere in Louisiana, a unique dialect of the Acadian-French language and its culture remain, now also integrated with Creole, Caribbean, and other cultures. This information is provided to explain Anne's French-language duet (closing out the CD) with Quebec singer Isabelle Boulay on "Si Jamais Je Te Revois (If I Ever See You Again)." Murray first recorded this song on her 1991 album "Yes, I Do."

Other tracks include a 1996 live performance culled from a Montreal concert in which Celine Dion joined Anne onstage to duet on "When I Fall in Love." Both singers recorded the song in 1993 - Murray on her album Croonin', and Dion recorded the song for the Sleepless In Seattle: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack as a duet with Britain's Clive Griffin. The Dion/Griffin single reached the Top 25 on Billboard's Hot 100 Singles chart during the same year. While the duet is passable (Dion overpowers Murray, of course) and the audio quality is not exactly overwhelming, the interesting note is that the two never actually rehearsed or performed the song together until the actual concert that evening. Celine sang her part through the speaker of her cellphone with Anne on the other end during the afternoon preceding the concert, but somehow the two pulled it off quite nicely that evening! Now, that's two pros if ever there were any.

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