(Australia) DAILY MIRROR 4th March 1976

 

GO scene

 

MELANIE'S A WELCOME

Melanie Safka, now touring Australia, need never worry about people asking, "Who's that singing"?

She's one of a kind, both in her writing and singing.

 On her latest album. Sunset And Other Beginnings, she does two songs you've heard hundreds of times before - Almost Like Being In Love and Ol' Man River (yeah, true!) And she lifts them bodily out of Cliché Corner with treatments so different and apt it makes you wonder why someone didn't see the possibilities long before Melanie did.

 But that's only one side of her talent. The other side, singing her own songs, is how we know her best.

 And she has nine new songs on this album, on her own Neighborhood label, released here through Festival.

ONE OF A KIND

'GROOVIN' -  with Jack Kelly

 

So far only one of them has begun to make an impact -- Even Better Than I Know Myself - but a Paul Williams album without a couple of solid long-term hits, would create a precedent.

There doesn't seem much danger of that.

Third in the line-up of writer-singers and arguably the most successful of the three is Paul Anka.

Times Of Your Life, on United Artists, brings together some of his best recent hits - including Having My Baby, I Don't Like To Sleep Alone and There's Nothing Stronger Than Our Love.

 

I like her What Do I Keep? Where's The Band? Dream Seller and People Are Just Getting Ready

Paul Williams, also a very individual songwriter singer, has a new A & M album called Ordinary Fool.

It's all new material mostly ballads, a couple of up-tempo numbers, some from Williams's film work, others just songs.

 

 

 


Back to Discography Index

Back to Chronology
Back to Melanie