DL: please explain Barbra Streisand's appeal to me

One reviewer called it 'emotional vomit' without heart. That pretty much sums it up.

Talent. A boatload of it.

[quote] In my opinion, her singing is overwrought, her personality is not endearing, she is not particularly attractive, she lacks charisma.

OP, Streisand is an overrated cunt but all the things you wrote about her could just as easily be applied to Liza or Judy also. They are all bearable only in extremely small doses.

Her soaring voice.

Look, I'm not a die-hard or anything, but in spite of how grand she became, she could always belt out a number.

And keep in mind, she basically did Funny Girl on Broadway and then shot to superstardom in movies and never went back. How many Broadway talents can you name that did that? It was bound to shape her sense of self.

I do find her guarded and a bit annoying. But she has (had?) a remarkable gift and every reason to be proud of it.

I think people would have loved her even more, though, if she'd done a return to the stage, acted a bit more humble and normal....

....her playing "I don't take myself so seriously" parts in silly comedy movies came a tad late in her career. It could have helped her earlier on. I think Bette, Whitney and Cher (and Celine) felt much more approachable because they showed that they were completely aware of how silly their own hype was and how they out their pants on one leg at a time.

Barbra often tried to position herself as a great beauty in her films, and always kept the nails, and posed and wanted to appear ethereal and otherworldly....that got irritating fast. And she built a personal shopping mall under her house, FFS. And had to always be interviewed on her "good" side. And spray-painted Oprah's microphone white. Etc, etc, etc. It's like...get over yourself.

But damn, if she didn't deliver the vocals and sell out concerts. Good for her.

[quote]Streisand is an overrated cunt but all the things you wrote about her could just as easily be applied to Liza or Judy also. They are all bearable only in extremely small doses.

r3 glad I dodged that bullet!

Strangely enough I also wanted to make a post about that! I recently watched Prince of Tides and Yentl and both movies are mediocre to bad. I even disliked Funny Girl.

Yentl has it's own appeal. It is slow, yes, but the subject matter is unusual and interesting, I thought.

Funny Girl gets dry in Act 2 but is fun initially.

It’s like looking in a mirror!

I've always felt that Streisand's real personality is somewhere between the screaming, foul-mouthed hooker in "Owl and the Pussycat" and the crazy, violent hooker in "Nuts".

R3, I would add Gaga, Madonna, Janet, Sinatra, Buble and many others to your list.

That anyone would buy her as a hooker - I’m plotzing!

She has managed to score some major quality cock over the years.

I think "you had to be there." I wasn't there and I don't get it. People who were young during her advent are most fanatical and that makes sense. The same applies to Madonna, Tori Amos, Lady Gaga et al.--they'll never be quite as appreciated by most people as they are by people who came of age when they were at their peaks.

Streisand's voice is nice sounding but unmoving to me. She has a strong vocal instrument and she plays it well, but I can't understand anyone caring passionately about her music. My mother had her Christmas album and I swear her insane, manic JINGLEBELLSJINGLEBELLSJINGLEALLTHEWAY! performance nearly drove me to violence.

I haven't seen most of her celebrated movies. I saw The Prince of Tides on TV a few years ago and I was surprised that the movie wasn't very good but much more surprised by her poor, unconvincing acting. She PERFORMED in all caps, and it was just way too superficial and theatrical.

With her voice and based on that performance style, I can imagine that she might be good in musicals.

But--and apologies to those who idolize her--I have to confess that I grew up seeing her on TV appearances and she comes across to me as patently insane. All the rumors about her demanding "diva-ness" turn me off to her. On Oprah's show, she forced the crew to spray paint her microphone to match her outfit, she was there to promote a picture book she "wrote" about her own house (That. Is. Fucked. Up.), and she gave a tour of the mini-mall she had built in a bunker underneath that house. And if all that didn't make me think she's nuts, that psychotic Jingle Bells performance does it.

There's some entertainment value in insanity but I don't really find it inspiring or impressive. Celine Dion, on the other hand, does bland and shallow music, and she's also maniacal, but I find her craziness entertaining and endearing. But then Babs is rumored to be a jerk and Celine, for all her oddness, is entirely lovable. Despite all Barbra's insanity, she still somehow seems bland and uncompelling to me, and about as deep as dishwater.

But hey, I'm the one who has undying admiration for Tori Amos, Kate Bush, Fiona Apple and some others who are bonkers in their own ways and certainly not everyone's tastes. I do not have a positive view of Streisand based on what I have seen of her but I understand other people see and hear different and better qualities in her than I do, and that's cool.

La Streisand is the great voice of our time.

[quote]On Oprah's show, she forced the crew to spray paint her microphone to match her outfit

This is hilarious to me r13

Who else could wear 25 pounds of hair?

In her day Babs had a certain appeal on many levels.

I was never a fanboy, but I've always respected Streisand.

I was "there" and thought Tori Amos sucked and never had much enthusiasm for Cher or Madonna, although I thought Madonna had some talent as an "entertainer" rather than as a singer.

Streisand had a better voice in her prime than the other divas mentioned here---it lacked the conservatory discipline of Dionne Warwick, but she was clearly in control of it. She lacked Judy's needy charisma, but was more contemporary in her delivery if less emotionally connected to an audience. She probably has some comic gifts but she seems too uptight to show them well. Her singing style now seems dated, so I can imagine a lot of people don't get her anymore.

She’s ugly.

Great voice but hands down she is the ugliest movie star ever

Here is an example for me ... Barbra singing "Memory" is technically suburb.

[quote]her singing is overwrought

Yes, it often is.

But you purport to love Judy and Liza?

That's adorable.

But Betty Lynn's version moves me a great deal more.

(In Barbra's defense, Betty had a lot more experience performing it in the context of the musical)

It's almost as if Barbra's version is TOO perfect

r22 it's the whole package, r22. I feel that, especially in Judy's case, they had enough compensating qualities to make up for it

Get ahold of the bootlegs -- now available on European label cds -- of her when she' 17/18 at the Hungry i and the Bon Soir. You'll understand.

The first ten years of her career were first rate, with only an occasional misstep. She was unconventional looking at at time when entertainment was starting to slowly get away from the fresh faced, sanitized cleanliness of the 1950's into the "messy" counterculture of the 60's. But while her appearance was kooky, her material was targeted to general audiences, especially those who didn't want to venture too far away from Perry Como and Johnny Mathis. So she really hit all bases.

I think the rot started to set in after she met Jon Peters and we got the one two punch of the Butterfly album and the pale "What's Up Doc?" imitation For Pete's Sake. But she got by on her mystique and her voice, which could make the most out of even the most substandard pop material that she recorded. Not really performing or appearing at public events for twenty five years was a good move as well, it created major buzz and anticipation whenever she did show up. Her 1994 tour was a HUGE deal. NY treated it like a major homecoming.

I think if she had retired after marrying James Brolin, she would be viewed differently. But she didn't , and albums became very cheesy and MOR, the voice deteriorated, and the kookiness has just turned into downright bizarre behavior. She's been insulated too long in her shopping mall and it shows. Also, all the plastic surgery. I really didn't think she would go that route, given how into feminism she is. One would have thought she would have aged more naturally. But she's Hollywood at heart, despite what she protests.

I go back and forth on Babs. She’s so deranged that she’s very entertaining and deeply, crazily insecure about her looks as proven by Prince of Tides and that movie where she plays a 50 year old hooker, so it’s kind of funny.

But on the other hand, she is so completely self absorbed that she once told a story about how she had to have arrows painted on the floor from set to her trailer when she was working on a movie because she couldn’t find her way back and forth. I don’t think she spends five minutes of one single year thinking about anyone but herself.

My favorite Barbra Streisand story:

"I was in a cab and on the radio someone was singing 'Alfie' and it was so beautiful I had to call the radio station and ask who the girl was who was singing. They told me it was me."

First and foremost, she genuinely had a beautiful voice, and phenomenal musicality. Plus she was very emotional when she sang, and gay men always love that.

She's also genuinely funny on stage or on screen when she lets herself be--she has great comic timing. (Sadly, she did not stick to doing enough comedy, where she really excelled, and did too much drama--more about that below.)

People also always liked that she was not pretty but demanded that people pay attention to her anyway because of her talent, so there's an ugly duckling appeal to her. And she looked very glamorous (even beautiful, though never pretty) when she was all dolled up.

Finally, the stories of her being such a control freak and demanding always getting her way because she knows best actually appeal to quite a number of people, especially from Long Island. I know a lot of gay men and Jewish-American princess types who love that about her, because it validates what they think about themselves: other people say "no" to them, but in the end she's always proven right. (In the stories she tells about herself, that is.)

She doesn't have much dramatic acting talent, it is true--her idea of expressing emotion on the screen was always to close her eyes, arch her neck back, and rake her fingernails over her throat slowly. But her other appeal carried her over enough that she WILLED herself into being taken seriously as an actress.

Speaking of diva stories ... from an old Betty Lynn thread:

[quote]I had a friend who was a company manager at a regional arts center. She said her most bizarre encounter with a star was Buckley. She apparently was insistent on being driven to a local CVS so she could buy some makeup before her evening gig. Standing in one aisle was a Sarah Michelle Gellar cutout, and when Buckley saw it, she took a Sharpie out of her purse and drew a mustache on it!

R30 That makes me LOVE Betty Buckley.

I’ve worked with Betty Lynn; she is batshit crazy.

Stories, r32?

I have noticed she is on Twitter 23 hours a day:

She comes across as very nice and sane on Twitter.

Stop derailing the thread with Betty Buckley nonsense.

This thread is the Streisand effect...

[italic]The Way We Were[/italic] made her think she was a serious dramatic actress.

Be careful, r35. She will find you and Sharpie a mustache on your face as you sleep.

Just listen to her first 10 years of work.

Forget the rest of it if you want to. Forget her films. Just listen to those first albums.

Listen to them, cut out the rest, and you'll understand her appeal.

I'm old enough to have been a little kid when Streisand had her first out-of-NY gigs. She was still in her teens and adults I knew who saw her kept going back and back, saying she was the freshest, smartest, bravest talent with the most expressive, expansive voice they had ever heard. I had never heard anyone talk about a singer this way (lots of showbiz/club people around our house). This was before the Tonight Show and "I Can Get It for You Wholesale," and even before her Blue Angel appearances.

When people ask about Streisand and her popularity, I point to those earliest years for explanation of who she was and how she seemed when first breaking out. And it all happened fast once she was 20 and nominated for a Tony and appearing on TV and then getting her own specials and making her recordings. No one looked like, sounded like, or acted like her, and she bridged several older genres with taste and respect while starting to do her own kind of thing.

As an autodidact, a possessor of an enormous confidence (and/or ego), and a sought-after talent, she became the Barbra Monster rather quickly, gradually shedding the vulnerability and emotional authenticity that softened the blare. She thought that honing her voice in a certain way that she called "perfection" was her aim, and ended up with a commercialized technical style with a gloss that was as much plastic coating as gold leaf. She went from exuding urban realism to spritzing suburban fantasy under a guise of the Total Woman.

I do think she was bashed misogynistically in the business. Yet her work in film, after her first appearances, took on the same overly managed tone as her vocals.

I'm not a current fan, but I play her early recordings with enjoyment and respect.

And my post, I see, is just a windier version of R39's pithy and true admonition. Listen to the first albums. And look for her earliest TV appearances on YouTube - the Garry Moore "Happy Days" astonishment, or any of the Tonight Show appearances before 1965 or so.

Is this entire thread just an excuse to wake up charlie? You know he'll have to pop in and shriek as soon as he reads this thread (you'll be able to tell his style from a mile off--basically he's thinks she's God and can do no wrong).

I agree OP, she has an OK voice, but she has never been on the level of the truely greats like Aretha or Whitney. Her absolute flaw is her lack of musicality and interpretive skill. As a performer she has zero personality. You could get a robot up there to sing and it would have the same effect.

Here's Gladys singing The Way We Were. This is how you sing for an audience. Some singers come to sing for an audience, some expect people to come to see them. Streisand is the latter.

Lol I didn't know we had a Babs troll r41.

I should have known.

She was born gifted with an amazing vocal instrument. And even though she wasn't beautiful, I admired that she didn't cut up her face.

r42, it sounds like you think only black women can sing well.

[quote]She thought that honing her voice in a certain way that she called "perfection" was her aim, and ended up with a commercialized technical style with a gloss that was as much plastic coating as gold leaf.

That is one of the best explanations of how she got off track I have ever read. Well done.

R42: Truely

Oh, dear.

The education is as limited as the musical knowledge. That's what being limited in perspective does to a person. For whatever reason.

[42]The horrid Whitney Houston one of the true greats? Oh please. And while Aretha was an actual artist, much of her work falls into a niche. An acquired taste. Gladys was/is magnificent but as show biz careers go, Streisand was on a whole other level.

^ [R42]

Some people have a C* complex.

Early in her career she was a fantastic singer - probably one of a handful of the best singers of the 20th century. She could have just left it at that. Instead she tried to be a movie star, director and personality.

[quote] [R42], it sounds like you think only black women can sing well.

No I don't. Here's Aussie powerhouse Tina Arena singing Enough Is Enough with Donna Summer, live.

R20, Bless you.

Whitney has to the most boring singer ever. There is NOTHING there. She might as well be singing commercial jingles. A beautiful voice yes but with the expression of a zombie.

When Babs started out she had a very broad appeal. You don't sell out a Broadway musical or star in a film that plays first run for more than a year simply on the gays.

You need a new pair of ears R54.

Dear god not I Will Always Love You! I will always not ever want to hear that song again. Find something else.

[Quote] she could always belt out a number.

Not without close miking.

[quote]And keep in mind, she basically did Funny Girl on Broadway and then shot to superstardom in movies and never went back. How many Broadway talents can you name that did that?

I can only think of two Broadway stars who went on to have huge music careers--Streisand and Ariana Grande. Can you think of anyone else? There really is no one else, male or female, except for those two.

Many have tried and failed miserably, like Jennifer Holiday, Patti LuPone, Idina Menzel, Lea Michele, Ben Platt and Julie Andrews, but they had no appeal to mainstream audiences.

How many decades did Ethel Merman have a recording contract?

Ariana Grande wasn't a Broadway star.

OP, as someone who also doesn't like herl, I will say I think her main fanbase are East coast gays, theatre gays plus older fraus. I don't think anyone else gets her appeal. Plus, I think the Barbra people love is the one from when she was a Broadway star, NOT the Hollywood one. I think most people would be surprised that Barbra sold more albums in the United states than any other female--the next two are Madonna and Mariah who are basically tied.

Nah. Streisand was only briefly a Broadway star. Sure, her fans love "People" but they also love the gloop from the 1970s onwards ("You Don't Bring Me Flowers," the Bee Gees album etc.)

[quote] Streisand's voice is nice sounding but unmoving to me. She has a strong vocal instrument and she plays it well, but I can't understand anyone caring passionately about her music.

I feel the same way. People love Whitney to this day because her voice and music moved them and transcended material that was schmaltzy (Greatest Love of All, Didn't We Almost Have it All, One Moment in Time, etc.). I don't think Barbra's voice transcencds anything. Among younger people, Mariah and Whitney are considered the two greatest voices of their generation. But the younger generation doesn't even consider Barbra because her music is a relic of its time. It's funny because Barbra was one of the few singers Aretha openly complimented. But younger people are way more likely to know "Respect" than any Barbra song.

Mariah's music is also old.

For one thing, she certainly doesn't sing..she screams and the most dreadful renditions of Christmas carols..better not be eating one may vomit .

I'm a Barbra fan.

But I don't care for most of her work after the early 1970s.

Too self aware. Too studied. Even the better recordings like her B'way albums lack the spontaneity that she once had. And those kitschy orchestrations. Still better than most singers but not something that appeals to me.

Taken all together, she's recorded more schlock than good stuff.

BUT her early work more than makes up for it. Way more.

Barbra Strident.

Her voice is technically amazing. And for her to have the kind of career she's had, despite not looking conventional makes her more loved. She's earned her right to be controlling and weird. And she seriously had all the best dicks. Good for her!

Whitney and Mariah were the downfall of good singing.

Now it's all vocal gymnastics. Vocal bling.

Sliding up and down the scale for no reason except to show off. No knowledge of phrasing. Completely disconnected from the lyric. Dividing words into 10 syllables. Etc.

It's impressive to their low IQ fan base.

I’m in my mid-40s and love Barbra. My partner doesn’t get it at all. I suspect it had a lot to do with being raised on radio in the 80s with one format played often in my house (light rock aka adult contemporary) and Barbra being on a lot- some of her more obscure songs like Coming In and Out of Your Life, Kiss Me in the Rain, Somewhere, All I Ask of You, Memory)... blew my gay mind. I’ve loved her forever, and even went waaaaay back to her early albums not long ago and they are fantastic.

I think Whitney's reputation for oversinging is undeserved. Saving all my Love for You, How Will I Know, All the Man that I Need, Step By Step, Exhale, My Love is Your Love, Heartbreak Hotel, I Learned from the Best are all songs where she doesn't oversing at all. Celine though. Now there's someone who raped almost every song lyric she came into contact with.

Interesting.

Huge Tori Amos fan. Semi Barbara Streisand fan.

Barb is emotionless and remote in her artistry. It's for the paycheck and for her ego. It's for her damaged childhood. INSANELY amazing voice in her prime- and fuck, her prime lasted well into the 90's. What a voice.

Tori (and Kate Bush for that matter) are fucking ARTISTS. Supremely talented and eccentric. Deep souls.

Barbra? Fuck. No.

An egotist on par with Stevie Nicks, Sting, The Eagles...

However, I always found her stunningly beautiful. I think that she is a stunning woman.

And to show my bad, bad taste. I LOVE one of her "worst" albums..

1984's Emotion.

LOL. Sorry. I am a sucker for a Steinman song.

But this bitch is as cold as an ice storm.

Tori and Kate, are in my heart.

Barbara. No.

I agree she was great and then went downhill in the 70’s. The Way We Were is unwatchable. In any event, she will always be known as one of the great singers and for being supremely lazy.

In Barbra's defense (and I find her boring), her voice stayed in excellent condition for decades. Ditto to Aretha and Celine. Meanwhile, Whitney lost her voice in the late 90s while Mariah lost her voice in like 1997.

She reminds me of a woman I fired

Agreed R75. Because her voice lasted for so long, I was SHOCKED when I saw her Netflix? Show/Concert/Special.

Wow. She sounded HORRIBLE.

But for a woman to sing that WELL into her 60's? Its quite a feat, especially for a lazy bitch like Barbra. She never respected her voice either. She was a lazy bitch (from articles I read).

Even Tori/Kate have had some vocal decline in her 50's, 60's.. but they know how to make up for it with their artistry. And it really works. Tori lost her voice during her 2017 tour for Native Invader. It was the New Orleans show. So she then mixed up the set list completely, sang in some very LOW register, and had the audience join in. That show was the 2nd best show on the tour. That bootleg is my prized possession. It is magic. It is art. And most of all it is the respect an artist truly has for her audience, and they, she.

Barbara is about herself. And once the voice went (as I saw in that concert) There is NOTHING there.

Enjoy the mall!

But that being said, she had the voice of OUR TIMES. Barbara. Whitney. Celine.

[quote] Barbra singing "Memory" is technically suburb.

Autocorrect never lies.

Lol r78

I didn't even catch that after posting

The Way We Were is UNWATCHABLE??

Disagree. Great film.

In the early 70's, as a young gayling, I listened to my mother's Barbra Best Hits 8-track over and over until she gave it to me. Then "What's Up Doc?" and "For Pete's Sake" were on TV all the time and I loved both of them. So she had the magic touch with this gay from the beginning.

This reminds me of the dead bestsellers thread. I grant Barbra genius but have no desire to listen to her anymore. She still sings like it’s the 1970s.

[quote] I can only think of two Broadway stars who went on to have huge music careers--Streisand and Ariana Grande. Can you think of anyone else? There really is no one else, male or female, except for those two.

Al Jolson

Ethel Waters

Fannie Brice

Sophie Tucker

Bert Williams

[quote] Among younger people, Mariah and Whitney are considered the two greatest voices of their generation. But the younger generation doesn't even consider Barbra because her music is a relic of its time.

Barbra's heyday was the 60s--Whitney's was the 80s and Mariah's was the 90s .

Their voices will soon enough be considered relics of their time. If you think they are timeless, you are really fooling yourself.

[quote]Great voice but hands down she is the ugliest movie star ever.

Google Marie Dressler and get back to me.

Like you, OP, I have absolutely no fucking idea what Streisand's appeal is today. I used to be a fan in my teens, way back in 1969-73, that's all. What was in the 1960s was more than 50 YEARS ago, and I guarantee you, these worshippers on Facebook weren't born yet. They have that "mom loved her" connection. I don't think Streisand - on film, on recordings, or live - has been remotely good for over 45 years. Even in interviews she's a self indulgent, self important bore. Streisand is a relic from another time.

This was on Datalounge last year and describes a little of what Streisand was like to fans in the 1960s:

"Streisand was a huge PERSONALITY in the 60s. She sang like no one else, she talked like no one else, she looked like no one else. Singers wanted to sing in her style; pages and pages were written about her style (singing and personality), critics fell over themselves with over-praise of her talents. The only way I can describe it to you youngsters is that Streisand was a BIG thing, yes, just like the Beatles were a big thing beyond the music. She broke all the rules and created her own. It was a breath of much needed fresh air in show business and adult pop music. Dionne Warwick and the like were not on the same planet. This changed rapidly when Streisand moved on and made her movie debut, but you get the picture. It was pretty incredible."

"22 year old Babs with wig and padded push up bra on the cover of LIFE in 1964"

[quote] Their voices will soon enough be considered relics of their time. If you think they are timeless, you are really fooling yourself.

I think you missed the part of my post where I also cited Aretha. There are several differences that exxplain why Aretha is still relevant to younger people (even if not on the level of Whitney or Mariah)--she sang soul/R&B which is still listened to in large numbers today; she influenced tons of singers who choose to sing today; she has at least one song that is still known by people today. None of that can be said about Barbra. And both of them were popular at the same time. And let's not even get started on other musical artists of the 60s who are still revered by younger people today.

I love Barbra, but I agree that her first few recordings and television specials peaking with Funny Girl (the film) are prime Babs.

The early '70s has some great performances (and I really like The Way We Were) but as the '70s wore on, the narcissistic tendencies and poor taste took hold. I find she is grating in A Star is Born. She still put out good music and I do like Yentl and The Prince of Tides, but even those two films, she got carried away with lighting them too softly and lushly, when the material sometimes required more grit and rawness.

Music-wise, she languished in MOR-Hell too much, especially in the '80s, though I love Guilty. I think she's better when she allows someone else to hold the reins, but she won't do that.

She's a wonderful singer in a technical sense, but somewhere in the 70's, she stopped being able to also interpret songs. She's always called herself an actress first, but her choices never seemed to be anything that would test her and seemed more about trying to prove to the audience how serious and/or beautiful she was.

I shudder to think what she would have done with that aborted Gypsy movie, especially with the way her voice had deteriorated by the point it was announced.

I do think that Aretha and Whitney will stand the test of time. Their music is connected to people's memory and they sang songs that all people can relate to. Esp Whitney was a great live performer, very few singers that were also major stars could sing an interpretation of a song that could connect to the last person in the last row of a concert hall or big stadium. Whitney had that, Streisand never was that deep or giving as an artist.

Hi OP/Jason. You’re just upset because I told you to act like a man.

Barbra Streisand is one of the last great stars who emerged at the end of the old star system and embodied what many of the greatest talents in the history of film and music had, which was intense charisma and star voltage that electrified both stage and screen. Beauty was often secondary and emerged as the result of genuine talent and hard work that would cripple today’s media parasites, such as the Kardashians.

It is that star voltage that is lacking in pretty much every female “star” under 40 today. Barbra displayed talent that none of the creatures in Hollywood today could begin to possess and a drive to persevere in a male-dominated, beauty obsessed world of 1960s Hollywood that would have destroyed most others. She not only survived but succeeded beyond measure. The gay male initially supported her in abundance, because she, like he, was an aberration to convention, and her voice spoke and sang in kinship with his oppression. She was different and, for the first time, “different” was being celebrated. Conventionally attractive, no. Alluring features, yes. Film is not about truth, it’s about illusion, and Barbra epitomizes that notion. When illusion is manufactured to precision, it not only becomes truth, it transcends it.

Barbra has evolved into the butt of tremendous hostility and derision among the gays. Maybe it’s the millennial and Gen-Z gay who was raised on modern musical sensibilities and doesn’t process the torch singer aspect. Why would a gay today want to hear a woman singing about the man that got away? And how would they know about oppression, when they’re in a time when being gay is just so “in” and they’re the sought-after guests at every party, the child that every parent longs for, and the new breed of parents who are going to teach the straight world how it’s done.

I can always remember Barbra as a “do-no-wrong” amongst the gays and the performer for whom they anticipated every new project, album, and the "impossible" dream that she would sing live again. Well, that happened in 1993-94. If you could afford it, you had your opportunity to witness her beauty for yourself. But there would be a change. Perhaps, the change happened after “The Mirror Has Two Faces.” That seemed to be the turning point in her career, at least film wise. There was the constant deliberation about “The Normal Heart,” which as Larry Kramer emphasized, could have been financed by Streisand for as little as 15 million dollars as a high-end independent film. Instead, she chose to recreate Nantucket on her 17 acres in Malibu complete with man-made ponds of color-coordinated fish, grandma’s ranch house, and a subterranean shopper’s world.

Perhaps, this was when the gays began to see Barbra in a different light, and perhaps, not as beautiful as she had once seemed to them. Maybe it’s because she didn’t descend into a train wreck like Garland, but emerged with tremendous wealth and her musical legacy intact. Or maybe because illusion fades with time, and the real being underneath comes to the surface. Like the old adage goes: “When you’re young, you get the face that God gave you. When you’re old, you get the face that you deserve.” Barbra's appeal was quite real, OP. But perhaps, the turning point began when the voice aged, when politics overtook artistry, and when the mad attempt to stay relevant compromised innovation.

I had no idea Kayleigh McEnany works for Barbra Streisand now, LOL!

I think Barbra's problem is somewhere she lost her ambition. I do think The Mirror Has Two Faces didn't help things. It was the last time I was interested in a Barbra project and I found it an insufferable vanity project.

"And keep in mind, she basically did Funny Girl on Broadway and then shot to superstardom in movies and never went back"

You missed a lot. During, after, and when Babs was on Broadway, she was on TV in specials and all over Korvettes and Sam Goody in good selling records and LPs. It wasn't "ooh I'm on Broadway!" to "ooh I'm in movies!."

Her voice has not lasted as well as Barbara Cook's did, and Cook was considerably older.

Barbara took better care of hers, r96. Barbra doesn't even warm up, does she?

Please, Barbra. Barbra, please!

It's going to be very weird when she dies in a few years, and there will be the requisite big People Magazine commemorative issue about her ("Barbra Streisand: The Way She Was!"). Jason will have to sell all that crap, but he'll make a fortune from it, and also from the sale of the Malibu compound.

Anyone who doesn’t understand Streisand’s appeal should just fucking die.

Whitney will stand the test of time but Barbra won’t?

LOLOLOL

Do straight guys like Barbra too ?

In the 60s she was a hit on Broadway in Funny Girl both Greta Garbo and Bette Davis among others praised her performance; her TV specials, concerts and albums were successful as was the movie version of Funny Girl for which Streisand won the Oscar in a tie with Katherine Hepburn followed by films that displayed her comedic talents Hello Dolly(69), On a Clear Day You Can See Forever(70), The Owl and the Pussycat(70) What's Up Doc (72) and For Pete's Sake (74); other films included Up the Sandbox, The Way we Were and the remake of A Star is Born (76). She was good BO for a while garnered much press and the public moved on. Enjoyed her in Hello Dolly, The Owl..,and a rather unknown comedy film she did with Gene Hackman: All Night Long. I was not a fan otherwise as a singer she was more my parents generation and Funny Girl, A Star is Born, The Way We Were and What's Up Doc? are not good. Nor is the film she directed The Prince of Tides. Mostly she annoys me now.

I hate her voice on "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)." She sings so hard and she has no feel for any music that's even vaguely funky. Donna is right in the pocket. Barbara is overbearing.

Whitney has tens of millions of fans around the world. New people discover her astounding voice everyday. Barbra had a lovely sound, but she sings like someone from outer space. No one gets what she did or does. She was dated when she started.

Whitney's voice is a glory to all the creators. She defied physics and defines vocal perfection. At her peak her voice literally made you back the fuck up. Not enough will ever be said or celebrated about her. Her voice contained the sound of trumpets with the resonance of church bells. That beautiful thick operatic head voice - those trills and riffs, gorgeous phrase endings. There was no more purely beautiful and powerful sound in popular music.

No one goes on about Barbra Streisand, except a few remaining fans who only speak of their appreciation for her in the past tense. They see now that she gave nothing at all to people. A singer is there to communicate and share. An actor is there to guide us through an experience. Streisand performed everything only for the glory and enrichment of herself. A miserly and self indulgent entertainer.

Whitney had it all, and lost. But everyday there is a new reminder of her greatness, her heart, her beauty and prowess as a performer, and her unsung talents as a genius musician and arranger of material. What she couldn't do - she had a good excuse for. And it killed her.

Her heart was there on display every time she sang. Sometimes it was troubled, but she always gave her very best. For the audience and with respect to the great gift she shared so beautifully.

[Quote] No one gets what she did or does.

Don't be silly. Her concert career disproves that claim. When Whitney didn't have Clive Davis programming her albums, she underperformed ("Just Whitney").

Whitney's catalogue reissues have flopped. Her best bet is probably to have that Kygo person continue to remix her songs.

R103, What did Garbo say and to whom?

R99, Excuse me?

She’s like buttah

R109 She attended a performance of Funny Girl with a friend. Word got out that Garb was there and at intermission people walked around the theater to look at Garbo by which time G didn't care because she was so awestruck by Streisand she remained for ACT II and mentioned Streisand in an interview.

Aretha was and will remain a musical treasure, but the idea of crack whore Shitney Houston having some kind of everlasting musical legacy is laughable. Someone accurately referred to Crackney and Pariah as appealing to low IQ types. They are the poster girls for the Star Search school of singing "at you" with all the finger wagging, neck twisting, bullshit that is their poor substitute for their idiocy, illiteracy and complete lack of understanding of any lyric.

As for Streisand some of her 60s material was good but she has released nothing but overproduced AC garbage since she became a movie star. Overrated beyond belief by certain segments of the American press, but she at least knew what to do with a song way back in the day.

Gladys Knight was and is still very good. Patti LaYelle on the other hand is a shrieking idiot who just wails without any understanding of the lyric. She is in the Pariah school: all volume and sass masquerading as some sort of artistry. She should have been put down like one would a constantly barking street dog.

^miss warwicke; loser, racist, ancient white fag

Bab's early work was spot on an priceless. No, she wasn't a beauty (that nose), more like a jolie laide, but she made that work in her favor. No one could have pulled off "Funny Girl" like Ms. Streisand.

Babs at top of her game!

She had a nice voice but absolutely lousy interpretative skills. He singing has no soul, no feeling. It's as if she has no connection to the lyrics or to the meaning of the song.

I remember Merv Griffin devoting one of his talk shows to a tribute to legendary director William Wellman, with stars who had worked for him.

Wellman was brought on last and Merv asked him who were then current stars. He asked if Barbra Streisand was a star, to which Wellman replied, "Yeah, but who the hell can look at her?".

R114 = homophobic ghetto hoodrat from Lipstick Alley.

I feel like a faggott!

cannot stand the stable of singers who sing AT YOU NOT TO YOU! that includes whitney, barbra, mariah and yes aretha and i'll add carrie underwood to this mix as well!....since whitney and mariah and carrie are more recent/current, it's THEM along with shows like american idol and america's got talent that have been the damnation of singing talent, in that EVERYONE screams loud and then louder, the silly runs, and the total lack of storytelling of a song ability! they are singers, but NOT VOCALISTS that's for sure!.. and yet they are praised by the "cough cough" judges of these talent shows and thus the public thinks wow, aren't they great! they can sing really loud, hence that must mean they are a great singer!...

they could be singing about anything and all of it would come out the same... getting off on their "talent" and forgetting about the listener and storytelling...

i know i'll get alot of grief for this, but give me karen carpenter's intimate, warm, pure, rich, fantastic diction and enunciation storytelling and singing TO YOU and FOR YOU voice anytime over these other women...

Link please, r112.

R122

Whitney's tours were flops. People would not pay to see her perform because she was a lazy performer and she couldn't reproduce her recorded vocals in a live setting. She used backup singers and all kinds of performance gimmicks to compensate for her vocal decline.

Only a dozen women have had a concert tour gross over $100 million and Whitney wasn't one of them. Neither was Mariah. They were not performers.

R123, Great article, thanks for posting.

Why so jealous R124? Whitney never flopped at anything in her life. She didn't charge $1,000 a ticket either.

Every singer in the world called Whitney the greatest voice of our time, including Leontyne Price. Streisand doesn't know how to sing. She destroys the meanings of songs to indulge her meaningless vocals. That's why her recordings are unlistenable to ears under 80 years old. Most 80 year olds can't stand Streisand either. She's a dreck singer.

Can we please steer the conversation back to me?

[Quote] Whitney never flopped at anything in her life

Marriage? Motherhood? Heterosexuality?

You're very childish, in addition to being stupid R128. Go back to your Tori Amos threads.

Whitney's voice will always be remembered as the greatest in popular recording. She was very beautiful as well.

Streisand is neither.

[quote]Whitney never flopped at anything in her life. She didn't charge $1,000 a ticket either.

Neither did the other female singers who had amazingly successful tours. They had tremendous demand from the public.

Streisand was the only one who charged those kind of prices, because she could, and people were more than willing to pay it.

Thank you, r123!

[Quote] Whitney's voice will always be remembered as the greatest in popular recording.

Better than Ella Fitzgerald? C'mon now.

[quote] Whitney's voice will always be remembered as the greatest in popular recording.

Only if you think the entire world measures greatness based on American tastes.

She never flopped at anything? Oh, let's see? How about being an utter failure as a mother? Or failing at staying alive?

I would hardly call Streisand a performer either. She grosses so much because she charges 5,000 a ticket. Given the state of her voice, it's a crass, vulgar gesture to her fans.

As for the slams against Whitney, you do realize the very same things can be said about Judy Garland as well. Whitney and Mariah are legends. Their place in pop music history is secured.

[quote] Whitney's voice will always be remembered as the greatest in popular recording.

I think what makes Streisand so interesting was that, at a time, she was a fairly good song interpreter, but as she aged, she became more concerned with perfect vocals than creating a moving or amusing performance. Now that she hardly has a voice left, it's become much more obvious how lousy she's become with interpreting a song.

I find her version of "My Man" in Funny Girl to be incredibly moving and definitive, yet nothing else she's done has ever moved me nearly as much. She had a gift for comedy, but she wanted to be taken seriously and threw that away completely. If she weren't so pretentious and dying to be taken seriously, she'd be doing fun roles in comedies to this date and might have a shot at staying relevant. The movie wasn't great, but I was happy to see her return to those comedy roots in Meet the Fockers. She was the best part of the movie and was very charming and funny in it. The Guilt Trip was lightweight fluff, but she seemed very relaxed and loose in it. She still has that potential and that's why it's so infuriating to see her still wasting that potential on a bunch of fluff.

R134 Garland was just as fucked up as Houston. I don't think Whitney deserves to be mentioned in the same league as the great Aretha, who was truly a musical genius, but she was definitely a better singer than Mooriah who was just like a wind up doll that would hit a whistle register note for no fucking reason.

God sent Whitney down to Earth because He wanted His only begotten Daughter to redeem our sins! She will never be forgotten as the greatest pop cross-over Messiah of all time!

R126, you sound rather desperate

R126 = R114, a Lipstick Alley loon

I dunno, R140. The Whitney bat could be a put-on, certainly sounds like it.

Beverly Sills was Brooklyn's preferred singer. Barbra has always been an acquired taste.

You're completely off R124. Before the drugs robbed her voice Whitney Houston was an excellent live performer and a very skilled interpreter of music and lyrics.

The word Superstar was not invented for Barbaric Streizand.

It came into popular culture to describe the Radiant, Warm, So Beautiful - Divine and oh so talented Ms. Ross!

Excuse me, r144...

Her perfect Malibu home is destined to fall into the sea from coastal erosion.

i know i'll get HELL for this, but all i hear when i listen to aretha is screaming and runs, runs and screaming, nothing subtle or intimate or beautiful..... for me, she's just patti labelle light, who is unlistenable to me...

[quote]Before the drugs robbed her voice Whitney Houston was an excellent live performer

I would disagree. I saw her in concert when he first hit big. She was in fine voice technically, but she was boring on stage. She was very awkward.

R147, Aretha turned into a screamer in the late 70s, but during her golden era, she was a remarkable interpreter of lyric. I find her original recording of "Ain't No Way" heartbreakingly beautiful. Even in her 70s hits like "Until You Come Back To Me" she knew when to hold back, when to belt it out and how to serve the song. Sure she betrayed awful choices when she bellowed her way through "I Dreamed a Dream", but her 90s output also included quieter, more introspective stuff.

Miss Franklin was, I think, a genius. Patti LaYelle on the other hand is just a screaming dog. She has no clue what she is singing about and just shrieks constantly because that is all she is capable of. She has no artistry and should be shot to death by a firing squad for murdering "Ain't No Way" in a so-called "tribute" to Aretha.

Gladys Knight is more like Aretha. She too knows when to hold back and when to soar. LaYelle doesn't deserve to be even mentioned in the same sentence as Franklin or Knight. Heck, I'd even listen to Miss Warwick or Miss Ross before I would LaYelle.

Babs should have retired a few decades ago, it isn't like say Judy Garland who needed the money.

Ms. Streisand despite all odd was still able to sell out a much anticipated concert at Madison Square Garden, and though there were some potshots, her loyal fans had nothing but praise.

That in a nutshell explains Streisand's appeal and why she's endured for so long. Those that love the woman won't hear a word said against her and will continue to turn up at her performances, buy recordings, etc...

La Streisand is the darling of liberal democrat progressive Jews from certain generations. They love the woman and her politics, thus are always a reliable fan base. By time most of them die out, Ms. Streisand either will be in her dotage or so past it she no longer seems relevant.

DL chatter at the time of Barbara Streisand's NYC concert.

🤔 If you have to ask, OP ..............

Here is a revealing interview.

Why waste time on hate to an old lady who was successful 59 years ago. Pick on someone who is relevant to today.

All further Streisand posts are being referred to www.getalife.com

"La Streisand is the darling of liberal democrat progressive Jews from certain generations."

Streisand wasn't political until the 1990s. To real New York liberals of a certain age, Streisand is a joke.

"Streisand was the only one who charged those kind of prices"

One reason besides her greed, was because she took a night off between performances. Her aging voice couldn't handle it otherwise going back to 1994. Did you know that the major reason Streisand returned to live show was MONEY? As per her old gay boyfriend Barry Dennen*, he suggested it after she complained about insufficient cash flow to maintain her lifestyle.

* or as "charlie" calls him BARRE Dennen.

R126, where did Leontyne Price opine about Houston? I’d love to read that.

R156, R124 is the one who edited Wiki's Lena Horne pg some years ago to say Whitney is Lena's number one pick to play her in a biopic. Total bullshit. Thank fully someone took it down.