Vocalists

The thing about Tony Bennett

This weekend, I had the occasion to listen to a boxed set of Tony Bennett again and again and again, over and over, spanning the man’s career, and this gave me the opportunity to think about his work and focus in on what I like or dislike about it.

Dislike, actually.

Back in his revival in the 90s, I enjoyed the Sinatra CD he put out and a bit of the Astaire one, but when I decided I needed to go back and check out his older stuff again, I was always disinterested. I remembered his work as being rather personality-less, fairly derivative, and — in it’s worst moments — mind numbing and smarmy. In other words, this was the Tony Bennett I remembered.

That was the Tony Bennett I heard endlessly crooning. I hadn’t bothered to listen to Tony Bennett in about a decade and this reminded me why.

It was such a relief when, suddenly, the CDs changed after several days and it was Sinatra. Sinatra, who sounds like an old guy from Jersey singing a song, whose voice is filled with personality — Sinatra, whose technical prowess has been exhaustingly overplayed in order to justify the fact that the guy was just good and real. This didn’t help Tony Bennett in my eyes, who sounds, to me, like The Croonatron 3000.

I can say good things about him. He is tons better than Barbra Streisand, for instance. And he has mostly good taste in songs, though “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” is a good indicator of the kind of thing I hate.

Finally I am at peace with the whole Tony Bennett thing. I put it to rest.

Source: shuffleboil