Seduction By Harry Connick Jr.: We Are In Love~

I received Harry Connick Jr.’s 1990 album, We Are In Love,in a very sad way. A friend died suddenly of cancer and her son let me pick out a few of her CDs and a music DVD. So now I think of my lost friend when I hear this album, but it tells me more about her now than when I knew her. What people listen to, or don’t, really helps you to understand them better, don’t you think? My friend had quite an eclectic taste in music and my choices of her Cds are too. Besides Harry she actually had a Jon Secada album, Carole King’s Tapestry, David Sanborn, Diana Krall Live in Paris DVD and the soundtrack to the movie Philadelphia. I’ve enjoyed them all, but I think Harry’s album is the most intriguing.

There are twelve songs and only three are not his. He already had an amazing talent at 22 and the songs, even those he arranged, are simply gorgeous and classy. His smooth voice is often compared to Frank Sinatra, but I’ve listened to them both and prefer Harry. Maybe because he’s still young and loves swing and jazz. He has a top-notch orchestra for We Are In Love and doesn’t play too much piano, it seems, but it's fun when he does. In the liner notes he comments that he set out to accomplish three things with this album of love songs (though love songs wasn’t his original intention. He wanted to expand as a singer, to display his own compositions and to work creatively with an orchestra. I think he accomplished this very well because, as I mentioned, his album is quite intriguing.

The twelve songs that run for about 53 minutes are:

We are in Love, Only ‘Cause I Don’t Have You, Recipe For Love, Drifting, Forever For Now, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, Heavenly, Just A Boy, I’ve Got A Great Idea, I’ll Dream of You Again, It’s Alright With Me, Buried in Blue

One reason why this album is so intriguing is that it’s my first album by Harry Connick, Jr. I had seen him act with Sandra Bullock in Hope Floats and heard him on Peter Allen’s last album (early 1990s), but We Are In Love is his show. Nothing on the album came easily, he says in the liner notes, but he makes it sound like it did. It is flawless in voice, composition and orchestration, dedicated to the memory of his mother.

Now maybe I understand why he chose three songs he didn’t write because maybe his mother loved them first. I'd never heard “Drifting” before, but had enjoyed Judy Garland singing “A Nightingale…”, although Harry’s version is even more hauntingly beautiful. And “It’s Alright With Me” by Cole Porter seemed familiar and was a jazzy welcome. These may be love songs, but they’ve got their own unpredictable sound with interesting lyrics rather than singing baby, baby, baby, I love ya! That’s why I love the album more every time I listen to it. There’s so much going on and his rich, sweet voice is only part of what mesmerizes.

You must know that this is an album for romancing or dreaming of love, not for high-spirited dancing. A few songs are pretty slow and nostalgic, topped by sax reflections by Branford Marsalis in one, for sometimes love is nostalgic, especially when a parent dies. Harry reveals not only his love of singing, or his talent for songwriting, but a gentle, vulnerable soul with We Are In Love. You can hear it in the way he takes his time to seduce us. Listen to these songs only if you have the time to be deliciously seduced.

This is an entry in Tom's Lean-n-Mean VI and Kathy's EpiWriMo write-off (see http://www.epinions.com/user-sleeper54 and http://www.epinions.com/user-kamel622)