Duets

1	I Won't Be the One to Let Go / Barry Manilow previously unreleased 4:41
2	Guilty / Barry Gibb 4:25
3	You Don't Bring Me Flowers / Neil Diamond 3:25
4	I Finally Found Someone / B. Adams 3:42
5	Crying Time / Ray Charles 2:17
6	I've Got a Crush on You 3:22
7	Tell Him / Celine Dion 4:53
8	No More Tears (Enough Is Enough) / Donna Summer 4:43
9	What Kind of Fool / Barry Gibb 4:06
10	I Have a Love/One Hand, One Heart 4:45
11	One Less Bell to Answer/A House Is Not a Home 6:32
12	Lost Inside of You 2:55
13	Till I Loved You 4:17
14	Make No Mistake, He's Mine / Kim Carnes 4:10
15	If You Ever Leave Me / Vince Gill 4:37
16	The Music of the Night / Michael Crawford 5:38
17	Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead / Harold Arlen 1:54
18	Get Happy/Happy Days Are Here Again 2:21
19	All I Know of Love / Josh Groban previously unreleased 4:29

Barnes & Noble

For a vocalist who has never been shy about asserting her ego, Barbra Streisand has been surprisingly open to sharing the microphone with other top-notch singers. In fact, nearly all of her albums from the past 20 years have included a featured meeting with a guest vocalist. Duets collects many of the great one-on-one gems from throughout Streisand’s five-decade-plus recording career. It’s quite an impressive guest list, including Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Neil Diamond, Johnny Mathis, Bryan Adams, and Celine Dion. The competitive edge actually brings out the diva’s best behavior; she not only refrains from blowing her partner out of the water with her massive pipes but always strives to find equal footing with whoever she is singing with, be it Ray Charles or Don Johnson. It’s fascinating to note how many of Streisand’s finest moments have occurred in the company of others: “Guilty” and “What Kind of Fool,” cut with one of her strongest collaborators, Barry Gibb, are immediate high points. That Streisand can hold the spotlight all by herself has never been in doubt, but Duets is a stunning example of her artistic largesse. William Pearl

All Music Guide

In her lengthy career, Barbra Streisand has never shown much inclination to share the spotlight. In the movies, she must endure a leading man, but in her recordings, she has gone it alone for the most part. In 1978, however, a disc jockey edited together her and Neil Diamond's recordings of "You Don't Bring Me Flowers," and she and Diamond quickly cut a real duet, resulting in a number one hit. Thereafter, she cannily coaxed others into sharing the microphone, resulting in chart singles with Donna Summer, Barry Gibb, Kim Carnes, former boyfriend Don Johnson, Bryan Adams, and Celine Dion, and album tracks with Johnny Mathis, Michael Crawford, and Vince Gill. The material mostly consisted of mediocre adult contemporary ballads that were outshone by the star power of the singers. This album collects all those Duets, plus a couple of newly recorded mediocre adult contemporary ballads sung with Barry Manilow and Josh Groban, and a few stray tracks from the 1960s and early '70s when Streisand joined another singer. Her unsuitability to the duet format is repeatedly evidenced, as she seems virtually incapable of shutting up when her partner is trying to take a solo, invariably humming in the background to draw attention back to herself. The only real exception to this rule is the version of "I've Got a Crush on You" recorded for Frank Sinatra's own Duets album, a track Streisand did not control. Naturally, the best performances occur when she is paired with a singer who is more than just a cipher -- Sinatra, Ray Charles, or Judy Garland, the latter two in TV performances. Then, of course, there's the medley of "One Less Bell to Answer" and "A House Is Not a Home" on which she finally finds the perfect duet partner, her overdubbed self! William Ruhlmann