Now we've got an interesting twist. Barry Manilow has released an album called "My Dream Duets" which consists of duets with people he wished he could have done music with, but they've passed away.
He takes songs by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Andy Williams, Judy Garland, Jimmy Durante, Whitney Houston and others and turns the songs into duets with these people.
One of the songs Manilow does is "Dream A Little Dream Of Me" which you can hear below
The concept might feel a bit creepy and morbid, but the music, what I've heard of it, actually works, and reviewers have been giving "My Dream Duets" thumbs up.
David Byrne reviewed "My Dream Duets" for The Talkhouse Music and loved it.
Byrne says it better than I can:
"The listening experience is uncanny - the dead sound remarkably alive. This is not someone interjecting comments over a scratchy LP or patently lo-fi recording (like the surviving Beatles singing and playing with the late John Lennon.)
Here, the dead sound like they are fully contemporary. Although the performances on this record never really took place, sound takes precedence over intellect, as all of us who enjoy music know. You will believe. You can reason as much as you like that this never happened, but your senses tell you it did."
I know other artists have done this kind of thing before, doing music with recordings of departed artists.
Although I like the solo version of Mama Cass Elliot doing "Dream A Little Dream of Me" herself, this duet with Barry Manilow does, to my mind, work nicely.
And no, I'm not creeped out by Manilow doing duets with dead people.
Have a listen:
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