What could look on paper like a cynical attempt to market jazz standards across multiple generations in fact sounds like anything but. Love for Sale is the second full-length set of duets sung by Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, a not-as-odd-as-you-think couple with a 60-year age gap between them, who have been close since they shared the lead track on his 2011 release Duets II. Gaga, despite her big-selling pop artifice and talent for wearing food as clothes, has always been a natural at singing with one hand resting on the lid of a grand piano, and is about to revive her Jazz & Piano concert residency in Las Vegas. Her voice here, with a plush orchestra behind it instead of electronic fizz, sounds right at home.
Meanwhile Bennett certainly doesn’t need her for credibility, having enjoyed late period success with a younger audience since his MTV Unplugged set won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1995. He too sounds in remarkably good voice, husky but strong. The pair don’t add anything that suggests it might be 2021 to this set of Cole Porter compositions, which includes, naturally, I Get a Kick Out of You and Just One of Those Things. You can almost feel the microphone crackle.
What they do bring is a sense of real poignancy, as Bennett is now 95 and effectively retired at last, having revealed earlier this year that he is living with Alzheimer’s Disease. This consistently classy collection is a fine way to take a final bow.
