The Broadway Album is the twenty-fourth studio album by American singer Barbra Streisand, released by Columbia Records on November 4, 1985. Consisting mainly of classic show tunes, the album marked a major shift in Streisand's career. She had spent ten years appearing in musicals and singing standards on her albums in the 1960s. Beginning with the album Stoney End in 1971 and ending with the album Emotion in 1984, Streisand sang mostly rock, pop, folk, and disco-oriented songs for Columbia records. Noted Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim personally penned additional lyrics for the songs "Putting It Together" and "Send in the Clowns" on request of the singer. The album, originally released on the Columbia label and subsequently re-released by Columbia and Sony Records, was a critical and commercial success. First certified gold by the RIAA on January 13, 1986, it reached four times platinum on January 31, 1995. The album was accompanied by a television special, Putting It Together: The Making of the Broadway Album. The original LP and cassette releases contained 11 tracks, while the CD release included the bonus track "Adelaide's Lament". Columbia re-released The Broadway Album in 2002 with an additional bonus track, originally cut in 1985, "I Know Him So Well". The album sold 7.5 million copies worldwide.

Production

Streisand started her career on Broadway, and so considered this album in sense returning to her roots, after two decades of recording popular music of the day. Streisand's record label, Columbia Records, objected to the planned content as it was not pop songs, but Streisand had signed a contract at the beginning of her career which gave her full creative control in exchange for lower earnings; at this point she stressed that, due to the contract, she had "the right to sing what I want to sing". She considers the tracks music she has great respect for, deeming it some of the best music and lyrics ever written. The lead single, "Putting It Together" from Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George, was rewritten to be about the dichotomy between art and commerce in the music industry. Streisand hired her previous The Way We Were director Sydney Pollack, as well as David Geffen, head of Geffen Records to play the parts of the antagonistic studio heads. Streisand wanted to record the entire piece live to capture the atmosphere of Broadway shows. Many of the musicians also played in Funny Girl 22 years earlier, and a month of rehearsals with Stephen Sondheim was undertaken before recording. The album's cover art was shot by photographer Richard Corman at the Plymouth Theatre in New York City in the summer of 1985. In addition to the photos used, showing Streisand sitting in a chair on the stage surrounded by sheet music, Corman shot additional portraits of her sitting in the seats.

Reception and accolades

In 1993, Entertainment Weekly looked back nostalgically on the album as "the work of a supreme singer-actress still unspoiled enough to fall in love with the characters she sings". Writing at the time of the release, Rolling Stone took a slightly more cynical view, although after criticizing the album for its self-consciousness and overproduction, reviewer Francis Davis did concede that the album "works somehow, if only as a reminder of what a neglected wealth of riches Broadway offers and what a marvelous singer Streisand is when she's not trying to pass herself off as a rock star". New York Times reviewer Stephen Holden, once himself with Rolling Stone, had no such reservations, declaring shortly after the album's release that Streisand had "just released what may be the album of a lifetime". The album was ranked #37 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the '100 Greatest CDs', the fourth highest album by a female artist to appear on the list. The album reached #1 on the US Billboard 200 chart in 1986, and earned Streisand a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and was nominated for Album of the Year. It launched two successful singles. "Send in the Clowns", from A Little Night Music, reached #25 on the "Adult Contemporary" chart. "Somewhere", a song from West Side Story, reached #5 on "Adult Contemporary" and also earned a Grammy for producer David Foster for "Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s)/Best Background Arrangement". According to the liner notes of Streisand's retrospective box set, Just for the Record, the album also received a record certification in Australia.

Track listing

Bonus track

Personnel

Information is based on Liner Notes.

Production

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications and sales