Barbra Streisand: Butterfly : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Barbra Streisand is still trying to prove that she's not a traitor to her generation. Fully half the selections on Butterfly are black derived and one, David Bowie's "Life on Mars," matches in audacity her version of John Lennon's "Mother" on Barbra Joan Streisand. Streisand deserves praise for her repertorial adventurousness, but she not surprisingly boggles at lines like, "Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow." And "Rule Britannia is out of bounds" is meaningless from the lips of an American.

Through close study of Aretha Franklin, she attempts to make her way through Bill Withers's "Grandma's Hands" and a portion of the reggae "Guava Jelly." On "Let the Good Times Roll," the debt is to Diana Ross. On the latter two, Streisand is unconvincingly animal. Being beautiful, romantic and desirable have not come to her so effortlessly that she can easily throw them over for the sake of a little authentic, malodorous sweat. Streisand has always been an immaculate technician, but hitting all the high notes is not what her new material is chiefly about. She remains most persuasive in her handling of the more conventional ballads, all of which here are forgettable.