Remember: he’s seen her naked.
It’s been three years in the making, but the fruits of their labor are just about ready for consumption: Lady Gaga’s long-awaited jazz duets album with Tony Bennett has a name, a track listing, and a release date.
Entitled Cheek to Cheek, the album is filled with jazz standards from the American songbook. Or, in Bennett’s own words:
It’s all the great songs of George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, all the greatest composers. No other country has ever given the rest of the world so many magnificent songs, and they’re gonna live forever. Wait ’til you find out when [Gaga] sings those songs.
The pair met after Gaga performed at a benefit concert in New York in 2011. Her set included a rendition of Nat King Cole’s “Orange Colored Sky” that sent Tony into a tizzy.
Upon meeting Gaga backstage, he asked, “Do you want to do a jazz album together?”
Three years later, their work on songs like “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” “Sophisticated Lady,” and “Lush Life” is almost ready for full-on consumption.
Here’s the duet talking about their collaboration on the red carpet, before taping a Cheek to Cheek concert special on Monday:
And here, for your listening and viewing pleasure, is the first single from the album: the delightful Cole Porter standard “Anything Goes”:
The Cheek to Cheek special will air on PBS this fall.
What do you think? Is this collaboration bound to be interesting? Disastrous? Monumental? Is it nothing more than a Lady Gaga vanity project gone awry?
