ARETHA FRANKLIN
“Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics” (RCA)
Is it the singer or the song? Trick question, of course: It’s both, especially in the canon of diva anthems. “Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics” — the title is the concept — is first and foremost an exercise in the obvious: a beloved voice applied to proven hits.
Clive Davis, Ms. Franklin’s co-producer, has used the same strategy with Rod Stewart and Barry Manilow. Ms. Franklin’s album flaunts her style-hopping, from reggae to big band to the borderline of hip-hop. Most of all, it’s an improviser’s showcase: a group of safely recognizable songs that let Ms. Franklin get as acrobatic as she wants.
Some arrangements echo those of the hits, like the sliding strings from Etta James’s “At Last” and the chugging guitar chords of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep”; they make Ms. Franklin the ultimate karaoke singer. (In a vigorous non sequitur, the furious kiss-off of “Rolling in the Deep” is eventually mashed up into “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” a pledge of devotion.)
Ms. Franklin customizes other hits while keeping the hooks: shifting “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” toward disco; remaking Alicia Keys’s “No One” as reggae; opening “I’m Every Woman” with slow, gospelly call-and-response and turning it into a medley with “Respect” (which was also a borrowed song, from Otis Redding). “I Will Survive” moves in and out of Gloria Gaynor’s structure; it turns one verse into a ballad, modernizes the beat toward house music and veers suddenly into Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor.”
Divas favor songs of indomitability, desire, vulnerability and revenge, often within the same four minutes. On this album, most of the time Ms. Franklin plays down the pain and cranks up the sass, toying with the songs like the virtuoso she is. At 72, she still leaps high and low, soars into soprano, turns flirtatious or bluesy or raspy at whim.
The vocals sound spontaneous and unprocessed, not hiding the occasional strain; “People,” in a slow orchestral arrangement, strives but creaks. There’s only one complete mismatch of song and treatment: a snappy big-band version of “Nothing Compares 2 U.”
Ms. Franklin doesn’t sound one bit lonely as she scat-sings and itemizes some favorite things: ham hocks and greens, garlic toast, roller skates. Roller skates? It’s a fun album, but one that raises a tough question. Ms. Franklin is a great, vital singer. Why hasn’t she been supplied, in the last decades, with “diva classics” of her own? JON PARELES
ANNIE LENNOX
“Nostalgia”
(Blue Note Records)
Sooner or later, most big-name pop stars in the autumn of their careers put out a standards album to certify their respect for the American songbook. Annie Lennox’s “Nostalgia” is a better-than-average example of a rock singer dutifully pledging allegiance to the past. Ms. Lennox’s beautiful voice has aged expressively. Its rougher edges, along with an on-again-off-again Southern accent, add a soulful element to her interpretations of songs associated with Billie Holiday (“God Bless the Child,” “Strange Fruit”), Ray Charles (“Georgia on My Mind”) and Nina Simone (“I Put a Spell on You”). But with one exception, a version of “Mood Indigo” whose arrangement evokes a New Orleans funeral procession, this collection is a staid voice-and-piano album, augmented with tasteful strings. The record, which has the strangely static feel of a concert recital, often sounds as if it had originated as a collection of demos onto which other instrumental elements were added.
The biggest problem is the skeletal piano arrangements, which inhibit Ms. Lennox from bursting out of her demure shell, although here and there, she is able to liven things up with a gospel melisma. There is never a sense of a singer and a pianist communicating, and hardly a drop of swing or jazz to be found.
Although Ms. Lennox sings with feeling, the impression she makes is of someone laboring to enliven a constricting format. The more formal the song, the more comfortable she sounds: Her “Summertime” works as a stately lullaby, but can’t compare to more operatic renditions.
Ms. Lennox doesn’t add life to less-than-great songs, like the old Jo Stafford hits “You Belong to Me” and “September in the Rain.” And on an incendiary ballad like “Strange Fruit,” she keeps a polite distance. “Nostalgia,” although perfectly respectable, is rather dull. STEPHEN HOLDEN
KIESZA
“Sound of a Woman”
(Lokal Legend/4th and B’way/Island)
Kiesza broke through as a mimic: In her video for “Hideaway,” she walks the streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and, in what appears to be one seamless shot, joins up with various dancers doing different styles. She slips into rhythm with each group for a few bars, then moves on, never breaking a sweat. She is an expert, and also formless.
It was a good gimmick, but it didn’t stop at the video. “Hideaway” is a bracing blast of club-music nostalgia, with soaring vocals by Kiesza and a backdrop of bubbly house music by the producer Rami Samir Afuni. Together, they effectively recreate the moment when the vocal house music of the late 1980s became the dance-pop of the early 1990s.
That sound permeates “Sound of a Woman,” Kiesza’s sneakily effective major-label debut. While she doesn’t quite have the freedom in her voice to mimic fully the divas she’s aiming for, she sings powerfully and with an understanding of how to deliver notes with rhythmic aggression.
At times, she seems to be channeling Lisa Stansfield, who brought maturity and reserve to the dance floor two decades ago. (There are also a handful of ballads here, including the strong “Cut Me Loose.”) As much as this album (center left) signifies Kiesza’s arrival, it also loudly announces the gifts of Mr. Afuni, a shockingly able mimic of a variety of styles. His dirty, bulbous synths and the scratchy digital percussion call to mind C&C Music Factory and the crossover house music of Des’ree and Crystal Waters. On “Losin’ My Mind,” he incorporates some dirty early Wu-Tang Clan-style drums.
All together, “Sound of a Woman” is a period piece and at the tip of a reawakened interest in that time period. Kiesza’s affinity for that era is literalized here in her cover of Haddaway’s 1993 anthem “What Is Love.” That song is ecstatic, but Kiesza renders it as a depressive piano ballad, extracting its anguished core, showing that she understands how much pain was underneath all that flash. JON CARAMANICA