Customer Reviews

Best Of: When You're in Love

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This album includes some of Murray's best known songs and demonstrates his interest in returning to old material (for better or worse) to tweak and sometimes improve it. The new arrangements of "Say It Ain't So" and "Never Even Thought" are worthy rivals to their original versions, despite the mild loss of youthful smoothness in Murray's voice.

Happily, several French songs also made the cut. The team of L. Plamondon/M. Head took Murray's tune, "You Are," from his album, Sooner or Later, and turned it into the infectious French language rocker, "Une Femme, Un Homme." "Children Only Play" from the album, Voices, is recycled into the lovely "Comme Des Enfants Qui Jouent." The best song on this album, "L'Impossible Amant," is perhaps the best example of why Murray is so loved by the French and why many of his later songs are better in that language. The English language version of this tune (if memory serves) is on the 1996 album, Pipe Dreams. "Dancing Flamenco Alone," is vastly inferior both in musical arrangement and in lyrics to "L'Impossible Amant."

Of special interest is the inclusion of six songs Murray wrote for films. "Dearest Anne" and "Cocktail Molotov" are from the 1980 film, Cocktail Molotov. The French song, "Darling 1944" is from the 1989 film, Un Ete D'Orages (and is recognizably the Voices tune "Time On The Line"). "No Mystery" and "With Or Without Me" are from 1982's Pour Cent Briques T'As Plus Rien, and "All The Way (Boys Always Learn Too Late)" is from 1988's A Gauche En Sortant De L'Ascenseur, both films directed by Edouard Molinaro. Molinaro (who is perhaps best known for his film La Cage Aux Folles) directed Murray in the 1972 comedy, La Mandarine, and the 1996 film, Beaumarchais L'Insolent.

Enjoy the English language songs, but buy this album for Murray's exquisite French phrasing.