This post is more about the artist than about the song. It’s truly impossible to pick a favorite song by Barbra Joan Streisand. She is one of, if not THE, greatest talents of our lifetime. Her voice is unique and impeccable and just exquisite, as if a diamond exploded into sound. Be it a song from a musical or a ballad that yanks at your heart or an upbeat disco anthem, she has no peer. You’d have to be deaf not to get it, and emotionless not to feel it. And if in fact you are deaf, I apologize that you can’t know the brilliance that is this woman. I don’t know what my life would be without the knowledge of having her voice sung in my head and in my heart. The first song I chose to represent Babs is Fight from her film 'The Main Event' with seventies heartthrob Ryan O’Neal. It marries that unmatched voice to the dazzle of disco with a dash of the disco-perm look of hers that I have always loved. How can there be anything better than that? Next, and keeping with the inimitably classic Jewfro, is Woman In Love, a ballad from 1981, another in that string of Bee Gees hits I’ve talked about on this year’s countdown. But this one is all Babs on top of weepy guitars and a slow tempo, and even a Bee Gees signature chord change at the end. It’s a right she defends, over and over again. She stumbles and falls but she gives you it alllllll....Beyond brilliant.
From the historical writing archive. Original date: December 18, 2017. Recovered from local source material; editorial review is still in progress.
