Guilty
Artist(s):
Barbra Streisand
Binding: Audio CD
List Price: CDN$ 10.99
Our Price: CDN$ 10.99
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Similar Items:
Barbra Joan Streisand
The Third Album
Memories
The Barbra Streisand Album
Stoney End
Duets (W/2 New Tracks)
Wet
Streisand Superman
ButterFly
Songbird
Track Listing
1.
Guilty
2.
Woman In Love
3.
Run Wild
4.
Promises
5.
The Love Inside
6.
What Kind Of Fool
7.
Life Story
8.
Never Give up
9.
Make It Like A Memory
Editorial Reviews
From Amazon.com
Guilty may well be Barbra Streisand's best pop album. At the peak of her late-'70s popularity, she hooked up with the Bee Gees' Barry Gibb, who himself was basking in his Saturday Night Fever glow. Gibb wrote and produced most of the material on 1980's Guilty, and he supplied background vocals as well as co-leads on two tracks. The results are still completely bewitching. "Promises," for instance, is a lounge-like dance number and Babs sounds simply fabulous--sexy, lighthearted, passionate, playful--all at once. "Life Story" is a wild epic, and "Make It Like a Memory" keeps soaring up and up into a stratosphere of shag-carpeted luxury. Even Gibb's wavering vocals are great--and not a little like a disco version of Mandy Patinkin. And of course, the hits are out of this world: "Woman in Love" and "What Kind of Fool" are titanium-plated classics the likes of which Streisand has not topped since. A guilty pleasure, sure--just indulge. --Elisabeth Vincentelli
Customer Reviews
"Guilty" Pleasure!
Admittedly I am much more of a Barry Gibb/Bee Gees fan than a Streisand one, so much of the appeal of this album is based on Barry Gibb's instantly recognizable songwriting and production style. However, this is a rare instance where a truly first-rate vocalist takes her shot at pure pop music. The results, to put is simply, are spectacular, and a once-in-a-lifetime classic.
Streisand found Barry Gibb at the absolute top of his game as a writer and producer, and added a strong and sure voice to the laid-back, butter-smooth melodies and harmonies of the Brothers Gibb. How he was able to reign in some of Barbra's occasional vocal excesses remains a mystery, but it is not just Streisand's best album, it is arguably the best one Barry Gibb ever produced, too.
Although "Guilty" and "Woman in Love" are the most-well known tracks on the album (the latter being of the absolute best pop songs of the late 70s/early 80s), most of the tracks are strong performers. Except for perhaps "The Love Inside" which drags somewhat and "Run Wild", which isn't sure where it wants to go, that is.
The real sleeper here is "Promises". It was released as a single, and was little-noticed, but in its own way, it is the pinnacle of the album. The easy-going groove is easy to get lost in, and one of the handful of tunes I can play endlessly without tiring of it.
"What Kind of Fool" is an exercise in meloncholy, but is a vocal gem.
"Make It Like a Memory" is the last, and longest track. Starting off slowly and gently, it builds in both drama an momentum until it explodes in a classic Bee Gees-style stomp, leaving the listener feeling like he or she just had a whole pan of double-fudge brownies. A completely "Guilty" pleasure!
MOR FM Pop Gloria In Excelsis
The late 70s/early 80s white-hot streak of pop heaven the Bee Gees were associated with was already mentioned by a previous reviewer. I suppose radio listeners probably grew tired of that fluffy, warm cotton swab soundscape, but listening to "Guilty" after all these years is still so much of a rapture i can't manage to escape the thrill!
I have no patience for Barbra and her "classy popular performer" appeal. I like her when she is the vessel to someone else's thoughts and ideas: she is far 2 conventional 2 be truly appealing on a deep level. But her voice soaring above the celestial lounge-funk of these tracks is like a polished operatic blues singer engraving gold on every word and clearing ambiguities with her special kind of hypnotic subtlety.
There's gorgeous funky pop - "Guilty", "Promises" - and amazing slow burners - "Life Story", "Run Wild". "Life Story" is an amazing paranoid accusation of jealousy: everytime i hear it i immediately long for the bridge - "Deeper than your valleys, longer than your memory, I go to your story's end" - and tremble at the recognition that it hits the spot everytime! I'd call "Run Wild" cosmic, but i suppose it translates into something laughable. Yet cosmic is exactly what it is. "Make it like a Memory" is simply blues meets opera with a somewhat complex structure - ok, it's not Stravinsky, but it's way above most pop/rock. Her duets with Gibb - "Guilty" and "What kind of Fool" - are perfect vocal marriages; "Love Inside" is heavenly and nostalgic with almost Platonic tinges.
Finally: the number one single, "Woman in Love", is like a carousel you get trapped in notwithstanding attempts to avoid getting caught in the dizzy giddiness of it. Barbra pushes the song to higher and higher levels and it seems to extend itself beyond the material and into the metaphysical.
This is really a rare album, one i started listening to during my childhood thanks to my cousin, and has never exhausted itself throughout repeated listenings...
Pop Perfection
For anyone who enjoys popular music, this collaboration between Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb is sheer perfection. For the type of music it is, it couldn't possibly be any better. It is thoroughly enjoyable, supplying ballads, athems, and dance music. Barbra's voice is alternately delicate and strong, sexy and angry, gentle and powerful. Her voice is, in a word, sensational. The compositions sound as if they were written specifically for her (and all but "The Love Inside" were). Her duets with Barry Gibb, though perhaps unexpected by some, are pitch perfect. This is pop perfection.
An Essential CD to own
I was homesick for this album when I heard a few coffebreakers talking about Barbarra Streisand but no one seemed to know anything about "Guilty," which is unfortunate because if you must own a piece of the Diva, this one is it. I actually bought the original album with the lyrics and numerous pictures of Gibb and Streisand in white. That was back in junior high and I wished I took better care of my stuff and have saved it. The CD quality is okay, it isn't remastered, but with today's high tech elelctronics, you can still get the beautiful sound. This CD is chuck full of beautiful ballads, with a Kareoke-like dreaminess and smaltzy lyrics. You find yourself singing along with lyrics like "I am a woman in love and I'll do anything to get you into my world and hold you within,..." just make sure you are lone in your car or the kids are playing outside, it possess you with hopeless abandon. So, it doesn't matter if you bought it 23 years ago or just yesterday, it still has the same whoozy effects. You can't help appreciating Streisand's rendition of Barry Gibb's peotic lyrics. And the best thing is that Streisand is not over the top screaming or strecthing her voice, none of that "Yentl" stuff. She is just right in this CD, soft pitch, full of feelings, letting her voice carry naturally. She has a gorgeous voice, this much I have to admit, being a non Streisand fan.
You will also appreciate the instrumentations. Lee Ritenour lends his jazzy guitar in songs like "Promises" and "Life Story." Good choice. "Guilty" and "What Kind of Fool" are the two duets with Gibb. Each voice completes the other in amorous melodies. What can I say, I am a sucker for this stuff. Hope that doesn't make me old school, but then again, I probably don't care.
Everything a contemporary pop album should be.
Her biggest selling album, GUILTY is easily Barbra Streisand's best contemporary pop effort to date. Barry Gibb's skilled production hand gives GUILTY an added sense of cohesiveness, something that was sorely lacking from many of Streisand's late-seventies pop efforts. Gibb (along with Albhy Galuten and brothers Robin and Maurice) also had a hand in writing every one of the nine melodic songs and even duets on two of them.
Their pairing produced a monster hit with the riveting title track (#3 Pop, #5 Adult Contemporary), however it's actually the other Streisand-Gibb smash duet "What Kind Of Fool" (#10 Pop, #1 Adult Contemporary) that proves to be the disc's show-stopper. Gibb's production and voice are an inarguable key to GUILTY's success, but it is Streisand's magnificent vocals that provide the album with it's soul, that's right soul. The chart-topping smash "Woman In Love" (#1 Pop, #1 Adult Contemporary) was the leadoff single and stands a slice of pure pop perfection, with Streisand's performance as thrilling as any ever captured on record.
Amazingly enough for a pop record, the remaining six tracks more than hold up to the three big hits. The restrained ballads "Run Wild" and "The Love Inside" are absolutely gorgeous, while the seven minute-plus "Make It Like A Memory" plays out like mini-pop symphony. Barbra even ventures into dance territory with "Life Story" and the international hit "Promises" and really brings these tracks to life with a sexy exuberance. Even the slightly dated light funk of "Never Give Up" is a slinky delight. GUILTY was a massive hit upon release, hitting #1 on the Hot 200 and achieving Quintuple Platinum status in US sales and selling nearly 20 million copies worldwide. This success is hardly surprising as GUILTY is simply everything a pop album should be.
