Ol' Yellow Eyes Is Back is an album by Brent Spiner, best known for his role as Data in the American television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, first released in June 1991. The title is a parodic reference both to Frank Sinatra's Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back and the Data character, whose eyes are golden yellow. On the album, Spiner is backed by the orchestra from that series as he sings a number of old pop standards, mostly from the 1930s and 1940s.

Background

In the liner notes, Spiner wrote of Sinatra's "You Make Me Feel So Young": "Sinatra at his awesome best. This song and dozens of others accompanied every dinner I ate between the ages of five and thirteen. My stepfather, an amateur saxophone player and a hell of a mambo dancer, had put together one of the all time great collections of popular music recordings anywhere. So, to my good fortune, we dined each night with the likes of Ol' Blue Eyes, Judy Garland, Nat 'King' Cole, Rosemary Clooney, Louis Prima and Keely Smith and every other singer that ever performed on Capitol, Decca or R.C.A. records."

Production

Spiner had help from a number of his colleagues from Star Trek: TNG. Wendy Neuss, associate producer for the series, and Dennis McCarthy, who scored the music for many of the episodes, co-produced the album with Spiner. Several fellow cast members (LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, and Patrick Stewart) even joined him to sing "It's a Sin (To Tell a Lie)," appearing under the group name of "The Sunspots", a word play on The Ink Spots, the first group to perform this song. McCarthy praised the recording experience, and compared it to the time he spent earlier in his career on tour with Glen Campbell.

Release

According to Spiner, the album was released in Europe against his wishes after he had rejected attempts by the record company to renegotiate his contract.

Track listing

Personnel