Let Yourself Go

1	Let Yourself Go, song (from "Follow the Fleet") 3:00
2	Two on the Aisle, musical revue~If You Hadn't But You Did 3:57
3	How Long Has This Been Going On?, song (from Rosalie, musical) 3:52
4	My Funny Valentine, song (from "Babes in Arms") 4:12
5	Strike Up the Band, musical (second version)~Hangin' Around with You 3:24
6	The Girl in 14g 4:03
7	I'll Tell the Man in the Street, song (from "I Married an Angel") 2:37
8	I'm a Stranger Here Myself, song for voice & piano (from "One Touch of 2:56
9	Nobody Else but Me, song (from "Show Boat") 3:25
10	Nobody's Heart, song (from "By Jupiter") 3:19
11	Why Can't I?, song (from "Spring Is Here") 2:13
12	Take a Chance, musical play~Should I Be Sweet? 3:52
13	Just an Ordinary Guy 3:06
14	Just an Ordinary Guy 3:05
15	Goin' to the Dance with You 4:27
16	On a Turquoise Cloud 3:16

Barnes & Noble

Kristin Chenoweth is an old-fashioned Broadway Baby. Trained as a lyric coloratura soprano, this diminutive Oklahoman possesses an irrepressible comedic gift, bright-eyed beauty, and a vivacious personality that inevitably led her to the Great White Way and a Tony Award for 1998's You're a Good man, Charlie Brown revival. A self-described throwback, Chenoweth often says she was born in the wrong era. This hasn’t stopped the triple-threat dynamo at all. Kristin, her NBC comedy series, recently had its premiere, and now the adorable chanteuse has released a first-class album, Let Yourself Go, showcasing her many charms. Tackling a host of gems from Tin Pan Alley’s Golden Age, Chenoweth puts her signature on “You’ll Never Know,” “How Long Has This Been Going On?,” “My Funny Valentine,” Kurt Weill’s “I’m a Stranger Here Myself,” Jerome Kern’s “Nobody Else but Me,” and the Irving Berlin title tune. Also included are three excellent new songs, including Ricky Ian Gordon’s bluesy “Just an Ordinary Guy” and the vaudeville tour de force “The Girl in 14-G.” In an earlier era, when Broadway set trends rather than playing catch-up, Chenoweth would have been a household name. It just may happen yet. David Cohen

All Music Guide

Kristin Chenoweth capped a rising career in musical theater with her debut solo album, which found her showing off her well-trained soprano in a collection of show tunes, most of which dated to the interwar period. On Irving Berlin's "Let Yourself Go," she tap danced like Fred Astaire in Follow the Fleet, and she worked up a torrent of comic anger in Jule Styne's "If You Hadn't But You Did." Then, she switched gears, proving herself a potently romantic figure in the Gershwins' "How Long Has This Been Going On?" and Rodgers and Hart's "My Funny Valentine." And so it went. Backed by the Coffee Club Orchestra, the resident backup band for City Center's Encores! series of concert versions of lost musicals, with whom she had worked on Strike Up the Band and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, she recreated one of the Strike Up the Band numbers, the lesser-known Gershwin treat "Hangin' Around With You," abetted by another musical theater veteran who had branched out into TV, Jason Alexander. Jeanine Tesori and Dick Scanlan's previously unheard "The Girl in 14G" allowed her to show off her opera training as well as her scatting abilities, and she fearlessly (and successfully) took on the ghost of Mary Martin by covering "I'm a Stranger Here Myself" from One Touch of Venus. Like an elaborate audition tape, the album seemed designed to suggest that Chenoweth could play any sort of part; sometimes the songs themselves reflected this goal of displaying versatility, notably the obscure Vincent Youmans song "Should I Be Sweet?," in which the singer must bounce back and forth between "sweet" and "hot" personas as she tries to choose between them. But whatever role she undertook, Chenoweth revealed more than enough talent to excel on a dazzling first album. William Ruhlmann