After a recent recent dalliance with hyperpop on the chaotic remix of her 2020 Chromatica album, pop polymath Lady Gaga returns to easy listening on her second covers collaboration with Tony Bennett. While their first, 2014’s Cheek to Cheek, cherrypicked from a broad selection of jazz standards, the immaculately produced Love for Sale – 95-year-old Bennett’s 61st and final album – serves up silk-soft Cole Porter classics. So we get a campy take on I Get a Kick Out of You, a sashaying Night and Day, and yet another outing for swing album mainstay I’ve Got You Under My Skin.
It’s on the less ubiquitous songs, however, that the pair seem to have the most fun, be it gliding around the fluttering I Concentrate on You, or offering up a gorgeous swansong to their partnership on Dream Dancing. Bennett, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, is also in reflective mood on the solo Just One of Those Things, the lines “so goodbye dear and amen, here’s hoping we meet now and then” given an extra piquancy. Overall, though, this ebullient album feels like a fond farewell rather than a solemn goodbye.
