{"id":22842,"date":"2022-04-29T05:30:56","date_gmt":"2022-04-29T09:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=22842"},"modified":"2022-04-29T08:48:02","modified_gmt":"2022-04-29T12:48:02","slug":"album-review-natalie-cole-unforgettable-with-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/04\/29\/album-review-natalie-cole-unforgettable-with-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Natalie Cole — Unforgettable…With Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"By the early 1990s, Natalie Cole was anything but a newcomer to the music world. Daughter of legendary Nat \u201cKing\u201d Cole, she had long since established herself as an R&B\/soul vocalist, and had racked up an impressive string of hit singles and well-received albums. Always reluctant to ride upon the coattails of her father \u2013 and not wishing to be perceived as doing so \u2013 she avoided jazz vocal work. But for her 11th<\/sup> solo album, Cole made the decision to switch gears, recording an album of jazz standards.<\/p>\n

It was a momentous decision. The resulting album, Unforgettable…With Love<\/i> was a monster success. Very much in a traditional vein, it finds Cole backed variously by a full big band or compact jazz ensemble, alternatively crooning and belting out a well-chosen set of songs from the Great American Songbook.<\/p>\n

Unforgettable…<\/i>With Love<\/i> was wholly out of step with what was happening in music in 1991. But there was precedent for Cole\u2019s major shift in musical direction: Linda Ronstadt had skillfully executed a stylistic left-turn of her own more than seven years earlier, leaving behind the comparatively edgy pop of Get Closer<\/i> for a pair of jazz standards LPs, 1984\u2019s Lush Life<\/i> and For Sentimental Reasons<\/i> in 1986. While neither of those releases soared to the top of the album charts as her previous works had done, they performed well and helped establish Ronstadt as a musical force of great versatility.<\/p>\n

Those Ronstadt albums also served notice that a market for jazz vocal standards still existed. So in an era that also saw the release of Nirvana\u2019s Nevermind<\/i>, Pearl Jam\u2019s Ten<\/i>, R.E.M.\u2019s Out of Time<\/i> and U2\u2019s Achtung Baby<\/i>, Natalie Cole recorded a set of 22 songs in an unabashedly classic\/retro style.<\/p>\n

These weren\u2019t randomly selected tunes, either. Each of the 22 tracks on Unforgettable…With Love<\/i> was already closely associated with her late father. And while Natalie Cole\u2019s readings of these songs are indeed classic, they don\u2019t always feature arrangements that closely follow Nat\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Natalie was 15 when her father had passed, and had already initiated a career as a singer. And her father\u2019s songs remained a prominent part of the musical lexicon when she reached adulthood. The readings of these songs demonstrate Natalie Cole\u2019s deep understanding of the material; she sounds completely natural singing \u201cL-O-V-E\u201d and a medley that includes \u201cFor Sentimental Reasons,\u201d \u201cTenderly\u201d and \u201cAutumn Leaves.\u201d<\/p>\n

The arrangements are note-perfect, demonstrating a deft balance between delivering instrumental thrills and providing a sympathetic backing for Cole\u2019s spirited vocals. She handles scat vocals with ease, and digs into the sultry and emotional content of the lyrics (witness \u201cSmile\u201d for proof).<\/p>\n

As wonderful an album as it is, Unforgettable…With Love<\/i> would come to be remembered most for a somewhat controversial closing track. Even though Nat \u201cKing Cole\u201d had passed away many years before, the record features a duet between him and his daughter. Similar in concept to an approach The Beatles would employ just a few years later, \u201cUnforgettable\u201d combines an existing vocal track with new instrumental backing and additional vocals from Cole\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n

But unlike \u201cFree as a Bird,\u201d the duet version of \u201cUnforgettable\u201d doesn\u2019t work from a crude demo; Nat\u2019s vocal performance is a crystalline studio recording. And it\u2019s worth noting that in 1991, the technology used to fuse old and new was somewhat revolutionary.<\/p>\n

Cole (as well as producer David Foster and executive producer Tommy LiPuma<\/a>) were rewarded for their effort when the duet\/remake soared to the #3 spot on Billboard\u2019<\/i>s Adult Contemporary chart. The album itself fared even better, hitting the top spot on both the Billboard<\/i> 200 and jazz album charts. The album would eventually sell in excess of seven million copies in the U.S. alone; it did proportionately as well in a dozen other countries across the globe. And Unforgettable…With Love<\/i> served to rejuvenate and realign Natalie\u2019s career; her subsequent albums continued to explore jazz alongside other styles.<\/p>\n

And on her 1996 album Stardust<\/i>, she again duetted with her late father, this time on \u201cWhen I Fall in Love.\u201d That song was a hit as well, earning Cole a Grammy award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. Cole\u2019s wide-screen approach to making music would continue for the rest of her career, with a run that featured no less than three Christmas-themed records and one in Spanish. Her untimely death in 2015 at the age of 65 cut short a career that seemingly still had much to offer.<\/p>\n

In observance of the album\u2019s 30th<\/sup> anniversary, Unforgettable…With Love<\/i> has received a reissue that includes a pair of b-sides not originally on the album, \u201cAt Last\u201d and \u201cCottage for Sale.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By the early 1990s, Natalie Cole was anything but a newcomer to the music world. Daughter of legendary Nat \u201cKing\u201d Cole, she had long since established herself as an R&B\/soul […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22843,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,51,64,65],"tags":[4812],"class_list":["post-22842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jazz","category-pop","category-reissue","category-review","tag-natalie-cole","cat-42-id","cat-51-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22842"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22873,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22842\/revisions\/22873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}