Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today!
| Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today! | ||||
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| Studio album by Tony Bennett | ||||
| Released | January 7, 1970 | |||
| Recorded | 1969 | |||
| Genre | Vocal jazz | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Producer | Wally Gold | |||
| Tony Bennett chronology | ||||
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| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today! is a 1970 album by American classic pop and jazz singer Tony Bennett. Done under pressure from his record company for more marketable material, it featured misguided attempts at Beatles and other current songs and a psychedelic art cover. Both critics and Bennett himself have viewed the album as a career-low.
Clive Davis, head of Columbia Records, saw Bennett's album sales steadily decreasing, and decided the cure was for the singer to record more contemporary material. Davis later wrote, "Musically, Tony was looking over his shoulder. His repertory was dated, and the public wasn't buying it." Similar pressure had been applied on singers such as Lena Horne, Barbra Streisand, and Mel Tormé to record contemporary rock songs. Some artists of the time such as Horne and Peggy Lee welcomed the chance to try their hand at rock music, but Bennett did not.
Bennett later said that, "I started planning the record by listening to as many current hits as I could stand. I mean some of the songs made me physically nauseous." Clive Davis reported that Bennett literally vomited before the first recording session for the album. While many of the songwriters used on the album, such as Lennon and McCartney and Burt Bacharach and Hal David, are highly regarded in their own right, Bennett had no genuine feeling for their style.
Allmusic states that of all the songs Bennett attempted on Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today!, "Is That All There Is?" is the only one he seemed to show any enthusiasm for. Bennett's partly spoken take on The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby" has garnered the most commentary, with music writer Will Friedwald saying it was recited as if it were Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard and Time magazine describing it as "Shatneresque", making reference to Star Trek actor William Shatner's famously bad 1968 interpretation of the same group's "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".
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