Release Me 2 (2021)

Barbra Streisand explained that “I couldn't do a new album of songs, which I was starting to collect when the quarantine happened. I can't meet with producers and use the studios and the engineers and all the people I have to work with, musicians and so forth. So that's when we said, 'Well, let's put out Release Me 2.' Because I have a lot of stuff in my vault.”

Because of technology, Streisand was able to work remotely on the album: “This album was done on my iPad, with my engineer at his studio and me in my nightie,” she stated. “He couldn't see me. (Laughs.) But it was lovely. It was so easy.”

“(Release Me 2) was a chance to finally add the finishing touches to some of the songs that need them and it gave me a walk down memory lane,” Streisand told the Toronto Star. “It also gave me an opportunity to share work that still resonates with me deeply, regardless of when it was recorded.”

Several of the songs on Release Me 2 were remixed to Streisand’s exacting tastes. “Although these are all my original vocals,” she said, “it was important to mix the songs again and raise certain phrases in them that I felt are important, and I wanted to bring out instruments and change certain chord structures.”

For publicity, Columbia Records led with the lyric video and single of Barbra’s duet with Willie Nelson.  Next, “Rainbow Connection” was released, with Barbra talking about Kermit on social media.  After that, “Sweet Forgiveness” was released on Spotify, Amazon, etc.

“Sweet Forgiveness” was created during Barbra’s 1994 concert tour. Jay Landers stated that “she wanted to add new material to the setlist, so she asked her friends, Alan and Marilyn Bergman and Marvin Hamlisch, if they had an idea for a philosophical song. Then she asked Walter [Afanasieff] if he could try to write a ‘big emotional ballad.’ The Bergmans and Hamlisch came up with ‘Ordinary Miracles,’ and Walter, working with lyricist John Bettis (Michael Jackson’s ‘Human Nature,’ the Carpenters’ ‘Yesterday Once More’), delivered ‘Sweet Forgiveness.’ Barbra went into the studio with Walter to record both songs, however, ‘Ordinary Miracles’ took much longer than expected to solidify. With time to do only one take of ‘Sweet Forgiveness,’ she offered this spellbinding vocal. Barbra ended up performing ‘Ordinary Miracles’ in her long-awaited concerts, and ‘Sweet Forgiveness’ went into the vault.”

“We didn’t have budget or the time to record an infinite number of tracks,” Streisand said about “Sweet Forgiveness.” “Decisions were made fast, and we’d have to take the best takes and mixes during a tight turnaround,” she stated. “I like that analog has a warmer sound, you could hear surrounding noises, I wanted to keep that. Digital recordings often sound too clean, it’s unlike life, it’s too cold. I had to go along with the times eventually, but I fought it for a while and had many things recorded analog anyway.”

Jochem van der Saag’s remix of “Sweet Forgiveness” was released as a digital single to promote the album.  Streisand shared that, “I have no idea about that kind of thing. I mean the record company liked it or wanted me to do it, I guess. So I did it, but my favorite is the orchestration as it was.”

Although Streisand’s original recording of “Rainbow Connection” was a solo version, Jay Landers suggested that they create a duet with Kermit the Frog. “He said, ‘Look, you've sung with all these people like Lionel Richie and [Andrea] Bocelli and Celine [Dion] but you've never sung with a frog who is evergreen!’ And I said, ‘Absolutely. I love it I love it.’”

For Randy Newman’s song, “Living Without You,” Streisand said, “I hadn’t heard that song in five decades, but I remember how I gave it the old Broadway way. Everything makes sense to me as an actress when I’m singing. I saw a three-act play in a three-minute song. I bit into that song and had a character ready for it. (Producer) Walter Afanasieff and I came up with a new arrangement that served the lyric better.”

“You Light Up My Life” — “I hired Neil Diamond’s piano player to do an arrangement and I didn’t like it,” Streisand said. “It didn’t support my vocal. It was too dull.”  She asked engineer Jochem van der Saag to record congas to augment the original recording.

Release Me 2 closes with “Once You’ve Been In Love,“ a Michel Legrand/Alan Bergman/Marilyn Bergman composition that Barbra recorded in 1973 as a live, single take in the studio.  She sang directly in front of the orchestra — no isolation booth to preserve her vocals or the separation from the orchestra for mixing later. Based on bootlegs of the original sessions, Release Me 2 has edited out the original introduction of this song (maybe for the better?).  In 1973, Legrand’s arrangement began with a loud and discordant orchestral cacophony, followed by the downbeat which begins the Release Me 2 track.  The cacophony has been edited out of the 2021 track.

The Target version of the album contained a bonus track — “When the Lovin’ Goes Out of the Lovin’”. It’s a shame this song is limited to Target store buyers because it’s one of the most loveliest songs on this collection.  “When the Lovin’” is from the Emotion album sessions, circa 1984. Streisand, again, has redone the arrangement of the song, although she cuts the first chorus short in the final edit.  Listening to a bootleg of the original 1984 recording, Streisand has removed the woo-woo electronic keyboards from the track and begins it, instead, with a simple (analog) guitar and her beautiful vocal. The backup singers from the original session have been minimized on the final mix. For Barbra Archives, this is one of the best songs on this album, made better by Barbra’s rejiggering.

As for future collections of unreleased songs (Release Me 3 ? Release Me 4 ?) Streisand confessed, “my A&R man says I have enough for eight, but I don't know if I believe that. It means me having to listen to a lot of stuff, which I am not in the mood for now. I'm releasing this, and worked as hard on the art direction as I did on the record. It took a while to do during this quarantine, when I was really trying to work on my book that I've been lax about.”

Streisand also told NPR that “I was saving the beautiful picture of the vault, and me standing in it, for the next Release Me album, called Release Me 3.”

Release Me 2 was released as a digital album as well as a CD digipak with a 32-page booklet–featuring liner notes by Barbra Streisand and Jay Landers, the album’s executive producers. Several collectible 12“ vinyl editions, art directed by Barbra Streisand, were released in a variety of color packages, color vinyl pressings, and a special picture disc. The blue Spotify version (only 500 were pressed) became an instant collectible, with copies being sold on eBay for over $600 !

Release Me 2 debuted at No. 15 on the Billboard 200 chart (dated Aug. 21). That placement qualified Barbra as the only woman with new top 20 — or even top 40 — albums in every decade from the 1960s through the 2020s. Billboard reported that Release Me 2 sold “22,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Aug. 12, according to MRC Data.”  The album failed to place itself back on the Billboard 200 list after debuting at No. 15.

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