In 1987, the Pet Shop Boys resurrected the career of \u201860s icon Dusty Springfield, ushering her into the \u201880s with a massive hit, \u201cWhat Have I Done To Deserve This?,\u201d which led a number of other comeback hits for the blue-eyed soul legend. The boys \u2013 Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe \u2013 ended up having a knack for introducing pop veterans to younger audiences. In 1988, on the urging of their managers, the Pet Shop Boys aimed their shimmery talents at Oscar-winning stage actress and singer, Liza Minnelli. <\/p>\n
By the late 1980s, Minnelli was a bonafide legend but sported a somewhat spotty recording career. Her best records were either soundtracks to her concerts or cast albums of Broadway shows, her studio LPs indifferent affairs that largely missed capturing her specific talents. She developed a pop persona of the teary-eyed Showbiz trouper, pumping the air with her fist as she belts out a showtune. From her mother, she inherited a loud kaboom of a voice as well as a fanbase of excited gay men. <\/p>\n
Tennant and Lowe tapped into Minnelli\u2019s innate campiness when crafting the perfect showcase for her, the 1989 album Results<\/i>, a record of synthy dance-pop tunes that made the seemingly impossible possible: it made Liza Minnelli sound gayer. Though there\u2019s a general tongue-in-cheek kitsch to Results<\/i>, Minnelli jumps in, 100%, as if the lyrics she was singing were penned by Gerswhin or Porter. It helps that even with her histrionics, she\u2019s still a very good singer. <\/p>\n
As if to warn listeners that Results<\/i> isn\u2019t the expected Liza Minnelli record, Tennant and Lowe open the album with the looping, dramatic \u201cI Want You Now\u201d \u2013 a dark, epic record with over-the-top strings and a bouncing beat. Minnelli even gets to do some nifty vibrato-laden shouting in the song\u2019s peak. <\/p>\n
Once it\u2019s established that we\u2019re listening to a \u201cnew\u201d Liza Minnelli, the Pet Shop Boys recall Minnelli\u2019s theatre roots by including a HI-NRG version of Sondheim\u2019s \u201cLosing My Mind\u201d from Follies<\/i>. Predictably, Minnelli sounds right at home with the brainy lyrics, though with the moody synths and her dark voice, the song shifts into a creepy, paranoid, obsessed stalker anthem. The theatre follows Minnelli into \u201cIf There Was Love\u201d a song that sports a similar rubbery percussion like \u201cI Want You Now\u201d but ends with the singer recite Shakespeare\u2019s Sonnet 94 over Courtney Pine\u2019s soulful sax work. <\/p>\n
The best of Results<\/i> spotlights the best of the Pet Shop Boys and their muse. In the strutting \u201cDon\u2019t Drop Bombs,\u201d a loud, crowded dance song with Minnelli\u2019s sneering spoken-word verses, Acid House-lite record scratches, disembodied vocal samples. It\u2019s a mess, but a glorious mess, one that mixes all kinds of crazy incongruous noise into a three-minute pop song. <\/p>\n
Even better is Minnelli\u2019s cover of Yvonne Elliman\u2019s disco hit \u201cLove Pains.\u201d The rumbling, churning dance-pop is intoxicated and catchy and the best example the Pet Shop Boys\u2019 ability to adapt (then) contemporary pop sounds to a singer as antiquated as Liza Minnelli. It\u2019s a rousing number with a great chorus, including hallelujah backup singers. One can imagine the singer holding court at gay bars like G-A-Y or Heaven, lip syncing this song to throngs of gay boys. <\/p>\n
Though, Results<\/i> is primarily a dance-pop record, this is a Pet Shop Boys record, so there are some more sedate moments. Tennant and Lowe are masters at writing and producing excessive synth-pop ballads. Their slow songs are also very melancholic, and Minnelli is a master interpreter of their heartache lyrics. \u201cSo Sorry, I Said\u201d is an ethereal, atmospheric tune that has some lovely rueful singing; \u201cTonight Is Forever\u201d is a grand, gaudy number with some extreme orchestration by Twin Peaks<\/i> composer Angelo Badalamenti; and Minnelli dips into the Pet Shop Boys\u2019 catalogue for a mournful take on their top 10 hit, \u201cRent\u201d which includes a pretty cinematic story about a kept woman \u2013 and anything that exploits Minnelli\u2019s thespian talents elevates the material. <\/p>\n
One thing that Results<\/i> does, aside from making the case that she could have had a career as a dance singer, is that it recasts Minnelli as a glamorous, worldly, American expat in Europe. Minnelli is a performer who is largely identified with New York City, largely due to her cabaret work as well as her unequivocal success on Broadway. What Tennant and Lowe do is make her a far more continental figure on Results<\/i>. The production on the album is time-capsule late 1980s Europop. It\u2019s a seemingly incongruous image: Showbiz Broadway baby Liza Minnelli getting down with the Pet Shop Boys at acid-house raves in London dance clubs. But against lots of odds, it works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":34234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[8783],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-46067","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-liza-minnelli","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46067"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46067"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}