1. I'm a Fool to Want You2. For Heaven's Sake
3. You Don't Know What Love Is
4. I Get Along Without You Very Well
5. For All We Know
6. Violets for Your Furs
7. You've Changed
8. It's Easy to Remember
9. But Beautiful
10. Glad to Be Unhappy
11. I'll Be Around
12. The End of a Love Affair
This album seems to have one hell of a divided opinion about it amongst the critical crowd. Of course, when you release something so polarizing it's not exactly a surprise. Basically, Billie Holiday's voice was shot to hell by 1958 due to smoking and heroin and all that fun stuff. I assume this album was recorded with the same sort of career boosting methods that had resulted in Frank Sinatra's 1950s comeback, but the problem is that Billie Holiday sounds like an 80 year old with cancer, despite that fact that she was only 42 when she recorded for this album. Unnerving stuff.
This album was most likely an attempt to emulate 'In The Wee Small Hours', even reprising a few of that record's songs, but while Frank Sinatra was able to evoke a wide range of emotions on that album, Holiday can scarcely sing. While some argue that since this album is made up of depressing material, her destroyed voice lends a certain authenticity to the whole affair, I've never thought that any perceived authenticity immediately makes an album good. After all, I follow the pop charts, and if I judged my music in that way I'd only listen to field recordings. As hauntingly 'authentic' as this album is, I didn't really enjoy it much. The fact that her voice had gone so much made this album feel unpleasantly voyeuristic. I suppose I should give points because of how unsettling it is, but frankly there are a lot more unsettling things in music now. 6/10
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