Guilty Pleasures (2005)

Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb had a huge hit with the Guilty album in 1980 — it was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America with Platinum status following within two months. Guilty went on to be certified 5-times Platinum, with sales exceeding five million copies in the U.S. and 12 million worldwide.

“I’ve always looked back on the Guilty album as one of the easiest, most pleasant recording experiences I’ve ever had,” Barbra Streisand said. “Barry [Gibb] just made the process a delight. Maybe because he’s an artist himself, he understands what it takes to be a producer for another singer. For the past two decades, most of my records like The Broadway Album, The Movie Album or Love Like Ours were made with big orchestras and self-produced, so I thought it would be fun to work on a pop album again, with someone else at the helm. Six months ago, Barry and I spoke about getting together for this project … and it happened to coincide with the anniversary … so the timing was perfect. It’s given our reunion an extra special meaning, but it wasn’t something I’d really planned.”

Streisand then confessed: “The truth is that I’m building a house and I have very limited time, because it is a fulltime job … I thought, what a perfect time. ‘Barry, can you do it?’”

Although his brother Robin reportedly wrote a couple of songs for Barbra, Barry Gibb ultimately helmed this album and began writing songs around October 2004.  His sons Ashley and Stephen co-wrote most of them. Barry Gibb explained that “Brazilian music and my idols, Burt Bacharach and Hal David” influenced his songwriting for Barbra.

Streisand elaborated: “[Gibb] wrote a few songs and sent them to me to see if they'd be something I'd like to record. They were really strong, so I just encouraged him to write more! I told him how much I loved the sound of George Michael’s song ‘Jesus To A Child’ and asked him if he could try to write something in a Bossa Nova style. The next week he surprised me with ‘Golden Dawn’, which is one of my favorites on the album.”

Producer John Merchant booked talented local musicians from the Miami area to record the demos for the new album. “I said, ‘give me three days at Criteria [Studios] and let me show you what they can do,” said Merchant. “Barry was really thrilled at who we have locally.” 

Merchant and musicians produced demos of ten songs, which Streisand loved. She asked Merchant and Gibb to move forward on the album. 

Actual recording began in May 2005, with Gibb laying tracks in Miami, then traveling to L.A. at the end of May to record Barbra Streisand’s vocals. Only one song didn’t make it to the finished album — a song Barry, Ashley, and Stephen wrote called “If Only (You Were Mine).”  The song was still on the album close to its release, but it was ultimately dropped.  “If Only” sounded like a classic Tin Pan Alley standard, and perhaps it did not fit into the more “pop” sensibility of the album. (“If Only” was ultimately included on Barbra’s 2021 album, Release Me 2.)

“Barbra really wanted to do her vocals at home,” Merchant said.  Streisand, Merchant, and Gibb recorded at Grandma's House—the guest cottage on Streisand's Malibu property.

“It’s really charming,” Merchant offered. “The house was built in the 1950s and sits on the cliffs of Malibu. It has beautiful open beam ceilings, a view of the Pacific, but we had to essentially create a studio.”

Merchant rented appropriate equipment to stock the cottage, including a Neumann M49 tube mic—the very microphone that Streisand had recorded with on many past projects. He recorded overdubs and did the mixing with the Solid State Logic AWS 900 Analogue Workstation System. “[The system] is very intuitive,” Merchant stated. “We sat down, pushed up the faders and everything sounded great, surprisingly great. Within an hour, after seven or eight takes, Barbra came out and said, ‘That sounds fantastic.’ She said that from the first day to the last.”

As for the cover art and publicity photos, the original Guilty album was well-known for its white-on-white color scheme, with Barry Gibb and Streisand wearing white outfits against a white background. For the sequel, Streisand, Gibb, and photographer Alberto Tolot went for a black-on-black look.  Tolot (who photographed the cover of A Love Like Ours) shot Gibb and Streisand June 9, 2005 at the Barbra Streisand Scoring Stage. They also shot the music videos and interviews that day using state-of-the-art 24p Hi-Definition format. 

While recording videos at the Scoring Stage, it was decided to do a live vocal. “It’s a great sounding room and they have a beautiful piano there,” John Merchant said. “The song [“Letting Go”] is a simple piano-vocal. Barbra said, ‘Let’s do a pass of that!’ The first take was magic; now it’s included on the DualDisc.”

Columbia Records launched an internet publicity campaign for Barbra’s new album. Amazon.com announced hosted the world premiere of the video of “Stranger in a Strange Land,” Barbra’s first single from the forthcoming album. Starting August 16th, Amazon streamed the footage exclusively for seven days. 

Photo: Barbra's longtime manager Marty Erlichman holds the Guilty Pleasures CD.  Photo by:  Walter McBride.

“Stranger” was a kinder and gentler political song written by Gibb about soldiers away at war. The song was universal, but also touched on George Bush’s Iraq war. “I loved the first stanza,” Streisand said, “because to me this war is kind of senseless, and I don’t know why we’re there. It’s kind of painful, and I had always imagined just seeing footage of the troops, it’s like history repeating itself – here we go again. That was the meaning to me.”

Columbia Records released a CD single of the song. Columbia sent “Stranger In A Strange Land” to radio stations; the single was offered as a free bonus disc to people who bought Guilty Pleasures at the now-defunct online Sony Music Store. The single was also available at some of the big “Super Stores” like Target and Walmart.

Back at Amazon, fans who pre-ordered Guilty Pleasures online were granted immediate access to an audio stream of three tracks from the album: “Hideaway,” “Night of My Life,” and “Without Your Love.”

On August 23, 2005 Barbra's official site debuted the video for “Letting Go.” This beautiful song was written back in 1984, and Barry Gibb has stated he wrote it for Barbra.  Strangely, it was included on the 1988 soundtrack album of a movie called Hawks — but it was listed on that album as a “bonus track not featured in the film.”

Guilty Pleasures arrived in stores on September 20, 2005. It debuted at number five on the Billboard 200 album chart, selling 101,000 units. The album was retitled in the U.K. due to a previous copyright on the Guilty Pleasures title. In the U.K. the album was known as Guilty Too.

Streisand did a good amount of press for the album, appearing in television interviews on Good Morning America, ABC Primetime with Diane Sawyer, the U.K.’s GMTV, and a weird interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

A 12-inch dance single of “Night of My Life” peaked at number 2 on the Billboard Dance charts in October. Columbia Records had commissioned the king of dance club remixes, Junior Vasquez, to work his magic on the Gibb tune. The 12-inch vinyl single hit stores September 27th.