BETTE MIDLER; "Experience the Divine: Greatest Hits" (Atlantic). * * * *
With its multiple meanings, "Experience the Divine" is a witty title for this nifty 14-song overview of Bette Midler's 20-year recording career, in the studio and live onstage. Yes, her singing is distinctively divine, but of course she regularly slips into the persona of "The Divine Miss M." And, although her shows have always been a brassy-bawdy experience, "experience" in this case also refers to the breadth of her musical taste and interpretive ability that we, her audience, get to sample.Too many performers lapse into a one-note creative rut after at last chancing upon a hit-making formula. Not Midler. Or maybe diversity is her recipe for success. Beginning with her first album - 1972's "The Divine Miss M" - variety has been the spice of her style. (That classic debut platter is also the best-represented in this retrospective, contributing five of the tracks.)
"Experience the Divine" includes her sentimental but effective chart-toppers, "Wind Beneath My Wings" and "From a Distance." She dips into the girl-group repertoire (be it music from the '40s or the '60s) with her dynamic remakes of the Andrews Sisters' "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" and the Dixie Cups' "Chapel of Love." "Friends" and "Do You Want to Dance?" - featuring Barry Manilow, her pianist-arranger at the time - are here. The singer shines as well on tunes by songwriters from just about any era you can think of: Cole Porter (the morbidly bright "Miss Otis Regrets"), Paul McCartney and John Lennon ("In My Life"), John Prine ("Hello in There"), Tom Waits ("Shiver Me Timbers") and Amanda McBroom ("The Rose," from the film that made Midler a movie star as well). The set even includes "One for My Baby (And One for More for the Road)," the Johnny Mercer-Harold Arlen song she and her arrangers tailored for Johnny Carson's final "Tonight Show."
ABBA; "Gold" (Polydor-PolyGram). * * * 1/2
Between 1974 and 1982, Scandinavia's Abba was a bona fide phenomenon throughout the pop music-loving world, generating infectious hit singles, in English, at a clip that hadn't been seen since the Beatles. Their success was especially spectacular in Europe, Australia and Great Britain, where they had No. 1 after No. 1. In the United States their breakthrough was less eye-popping - only "Dancing Queen" hit the peak of the Hot 100 - but impressive nevertheless.
"Gold" gathers 19 of those hits in a 77-minute package, newly remixed for CD. The album was released earlier in many countries, but is only now reaching the states (with booklet notes apparently lifted without amendment from the British version). A video collection with the same title has also been put together.
Abba, as has been often explained, is an acronym containing the first letters in the first names of the quartet's members: Agnetha Faltskog, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad. Ulvaeus and Andersson, sometimes with help from manager Stig Anderson, wrote, produced and performed on the catchy hits; Faltskog and Lyngstad sang almost all of the leads (the chief exception being "Does Your Mother Know," with Ulvaeus in the spotlight).
The keys to Abba's success included that danceable beat so ubiquitous in the disco era, playful arrangements and the ladies' strong voices (the slight Swedish accents were actually kind of appealing). There was also a smart, even canny international flavor in most of the songs: that folkish Spanish lilt in "Chiquitita" and especially "Fernando"; the east European tang in "Money, Money, Money"; the hint of France in "Voulez Vous" and Italy in "Mamma Mia" (though more in the titles than the melodies). The result was a fun, peppy body of work.
The British group Erasure showed good sense in recently covering a few songs on the EP "Abba-esque." Some of Abba's serious forays could be "standards" if arrangers and interpretive artists wanted to dip into the catalog. Take away that wall of sound and imagine Barbra Streisand emoting on a stark "The Winner Takes It All."
ROBERTA FLACK; "Softly, With These Songs: The Best of Roberta Flack" (Atlantic). * * * *
This is not the first survey of Roberta Flack's career - and hopefully it will not be the last. Her silken voice and exquisite taste are nothing less than a gift to the world, and this 17-track collection emphasizes that.
The spare early '70s classics are included of course, including the Don McLean tribute "Killing Me Softly With His Song," "Feel Like Makin' Love" and Ewan MacColl's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," certainly one of the most romantic and perfectly performed love songs in history. So are some of her great duets with Donny Hathaway ("Where Is the Love," "The Closer I Get to You") and Peabo Bryson ("Tonight, I Celebrate My Love"). But this basically chronological 761/2-minute anthology brings us up to date as well, with effervescent songs like "Oasis," a chart-topping R&B hit, and her 1991 pop smash with Maxi Priest, "Set the Night to Music." She also updates the big band-era standard "My Foolish Heart" and ventures into totally atypical territory with the techno-dance groove, "Uh-Uh Ooh-Ooh Look Out (Here It Comes)." And it works.
RATINGS: four stars (* * * * ), excellent; three stars (* * * ), good; two stars (* * ), fair; one star (* ), poor, with 1/2 representing a higher, intermediate grade.