Lady in Satin

Billie's life was one of excess, and it shows in this album, released only a year before her death. She was considered the greatest singer of her times, but here you can hear the damage of her smoking, drinking and drug abuse. It's a shame, because the music is still beautiful, and there's real deep emotion in her songs, and one can only imagine how much more powerful she could have been without her declining health.

She's still considered one of the greatest singers of all times for a reason, she really has a way to soothe your soul, even if she doesn't come close to the likes of Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald or Doris Day.

The songs are all kind of samey though. A perfect album to put as background music for a dinner, or even while studying but is it something I would listen to just for the sake of it? No.

A pretty interesting look into the untimely twilight years of a legend. Years of health issues and drug abuse have made her voice sound a little more rough and aged than maybe it should have.

Musically, this is pretty good. This isn’t a 4 for me, but I enjoyed it.

Old timey jazz singing. Not bad, made me think of Fallout, which gets it points in my book. 3*

Much like Frank Sinatra, I have an appreciation for the vocals and the string arrangements with this easy listening music. But outside of a dinner party or a day where the mood fits this type of music, I don’t give it much thought. It seems very safe and hard to distinguish from the other music of the time outside of the vocalist being the unique feature. I think my brain has been programmed too to want more drums, some guitar, a synthesizer, etc. But idk. In summary, vocals were great but the music was boring.

All I can think of is the Fallout games and I'm not complaining about that!

Yay!

Music your grandparents made whoopie to. Not a lot of variety in this collection of dirges.

From the very first song, I already knew that I liked this. I don't really "know" anything about this kind of music, but I really enjoyed this album. I like her "fragile" voice, even if I understand some people say her voice is not as good as when she was younger. Well, I don't know about that but, as far as I'm concerned, her voice is really good in this album. This is in the range of 3,5 stars for me. The orchestral arrangements are very good. It sounds really cohesive, so I don't have real favourites. Among others, I enjoyed: "I'm a Fool to Want You", "You Don't Know What Love Is", "You've Changed", or "Glad To Be Unhappy".

This is nice, but not really my jam.

2.08

I haven’t listened to Billie Holiday or all that much vocal jazz before this. It was an interesting listen and she is clearly a great singer with a fairly distinctive voice. It’s just not really something I ever really want to listen to. On top of that, every song on this album sounded the exact same; same composition, same instruments, same tempo, same singing, same lyrical content. It just got a bit boring by the end.

Hiya Billie love. This album was a lovely time tbh, nice jazz songs. I prefer my jazz standards with some nice piano usually, but this is good too x

Absolutely heartbreaking.

Her voice was always described as "distinctive" and was a smoky, throaty sound without the sheer beauty of Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan, but with a virtuosic improvisational skill and control.

By this stage, at the very end of her too short life, the absolute control of her voice was still there, but years of chain smoking, alcohol and heroin had stolen much of her upper register and power.

To anyone used to the recordings she made in the 1940s , the first few notes of her singing here will be a shock. She sounds hoarse and gravelly, even while the grace notes and improvisational flourishes are still there.

Of course, she's past her prime and the voice is a kind of a ruin. But this is, quite literally, the sound of someone dying. A year later she was diagnosed with cirrhosis and six months after that she was dead at 44. On her very last album she had a nurse with her to prop her so she didn't fall from the recording stool.

It's almost impossible to give this a star rating. Is it a great, or even good, recording? Is it even an enjoyable experience? Probably not. But I don't think you can rate this in that way.

The sheer emotion of hearing a great artist, at the end of her life, having suffered abuse and racism for all of it, still giving all she has, makes this overwhelming.

5 stars for the Lady still singing.

She's got a captivating, unique voice which I like very much.

Unfortunately, the only time you'd find me listening to this album would be for sof background music when I had a group of folks over for dinner. I'm not benefiting much from intentional listening here

⭐⭐.501

No. Just no. Boring, samey songs and a voice like nails down a blackboard.

Clearly an influence on Lana Del Rey. It was a little samey and boring for me, but there were some pretty songs.

Vocal jazz is not really my jam. Especially with the classics, 99% of the time they are singing about love and the jazz elements are simple and seek to support the vocalist. Also, I have never liked the vocal quirk that saturates Billie Holiday's songs. I did like the backing music quite a bit and it mostly sat in the background. 3/5

I’m at a 4.5 that I'll bump up to a 5.

It did take me a bit to get into this though; my problem early on was focusing on this a bit too musically as opposed to simply feeling each track. Billie Holiday’s vocals here aren’t as crisp as one may expect, though they’re still very good. The orchestration is lovely, but a lack of solos / instrumental breaks early on doesn’t let them feel as dazzling as they should. Since it’s a cover album, I can’t exactly critique the lyrics much. Overall, for a bit there, I just wasn’t totally into it despite each track being really technically sound.

All I had to do was close my eyes. It really is that simple – just closing the eyes & filling in some of the atmospheric blanks my brain wasn’t concocting from just the music alone really gave each track some additional space that made it feel more lived in. Billie Holiday’s ‘less crisp’ vocals suddenly felt fragile in a way that elevated each track more. The orchestration got some more time to shine, and as a result, the flow & blend of her voice felt like it was working more hand-in-hand than earlier; less of a slight wall of sound & more of an active participant in each track. It’s hard to go track by track here, since a lot of these are straightforward love songs (and a few were previously covered by Frank Sinatra on “In The Wee Small Hours”), but since they’re so straightforward, it’s just a matter of finding that mental imagery that these songs are trying to attract. It took me a bit to find it, and once I did (& once some of the early kinks of the album cleared up), the whole experience opened up.

I do recognize that since the general structure of each track here feels kinda similar, it’s probably easy to bounce off of the album, or at the very least, it still might be hard to get into it as a full project. Those 44 minutes do feel a bit long at times, especially with the slower pacing on these tracks. For me, it would’ve taken more 'flaws' to consider bumping it down to a 4, but I also have more tolerance than some people. I do think it’s a 5, if only because the stretch from “You’ve Changed” to “Glad To Be Unhappy” felt undeniably strong (ESPECIALLY “But Beautiful”), and there’s not a single bad track here. I do wonder if there’s a ‘better’ Billie Holiday album out there, but this is a good pick regardless. I enjoyed it, and I’m glad it’s on the list.

It’s fine and lovely.

Schmaltzy string, Bambi flutes, tame brass and plodding rhythms give all the songs a slow baggy washed out feel that nails a certain set of moods - listless, cool, complacent. But aside from a few turns of melodic phrase and the creaking cracking timbre of her voice, it's over orchestrated, tedious and pretty boring.