In which everybody hates everything.
[Video][Website]
[4.00]
Katherine St Asaph: It’s really sad to see Tony Bennett succumb to the SEO plan of duetting with every bankable young star who agreed and releasing endless previews, either to sneak The Olds’ music like flaxseed into pop listeners’ diets or (more likely) make more millions. It’s worse with Winehouse, whose death wasn’t caused but certainly wasn’t delayed by it. As for the music, what could I say that Tom Ewing didn’t?
[3]
Anthony Easton: This sort of proves that Winehouse was an okay rock singer whose retro stylings pushed her into an MOR jazz direction she was not totally comfortable with.
[6]
Alfred Soto: Warm and innocuous, Tony Bennett is my least favorite of the classic crooners. On this duet he’s lost even the precision that would have enlivened this gormless example of cross-generational nostalgia. As for Winehouse, she sings as if at knifepoint.
[3]
Jonathan Bogart: “Body and Soul” is maybe the worst of the classic jazz songs — that is, for a real singer. A meaningless, mealymouthed lyric whose only saving grace is being draped across those elegant chords, it’s a gift to singers who are all technique but have no story to tell; they can run through the changes same as any other instrumentalist. But it’s death for interpreters, of whom Bennett is one of the finest and Winehouse was, and remains, a question mark. She could inhabit her own songs; with luck, she could inhabit great songs. But this? No one in the world could make it live.
[4]
Jer Fairall: Huffing and squawking her way through an affected Billie Holliday impersonation, Amy reveals just how much of her act relied on schtick in the place of actual personality, a petty annoyance on her original songs that comes off as downright ghoulish on something like this.
[4]
Brad Shoup: People want the product, so the label’s gonna bring out the corpse. But enough about Tony Bennett.
[4]