Jennifer Warnes Albums (8)
What The Critics Say
Jennifer Warnes became a household name in the '70s with her hit "Right Time of the Night" and scored equally big with the Righteous Brothers' Bill Medley on "The Time of My Life" from the film Dirty Dancing. She also wowed critics and fans alike with Famous Blue Raincoat, her album of Leonard Cohen songs. In all, she's sold over 35 million records worldwide, but she's hardly a household word in the post-Madonna world. It doesn't matter, however, as her singular contribution as a singer and writer will outlast all the Christina Aguileras, J-Los, and Britney Spears in the Columbia House catalogue and issues of Tiger Beat magazine. Thank God. Warnes has returned to the recording scene for the first time since 1992 with The Well, a collection ten songs co-produced with Martin Davich. And what a collection it is. As a singer and a songwriter, Warnes knows her strengths well. She understates lyrics and musical phrases as a way of getting them to open up on their own through her gorgeously wrought singing. She's no acrobat; she doesn't reach for the note that breaks the pitch-meter. Instead, she allows her voice to come up from the heart of the lyric she's singing. She wears the song and allows the song to adorn her as well, whether plaintively, as on the title track, one of her co-writes with Texas legend Doyle Bramhall, or her lilting, haunting, spiritual tome "Prairie Melancholy." When doing takes on the songs of others, such as Tom Waits' nugget "Invitation to the Blues," she imbues them with the soft, bluesy swing inherent in the original, but adds depth and dimension with her dry, reportorial storytelling (with fine guitar work from Doyle Bramhall). The songs on The Well seem spare and open, layered lightly, and full of room for Warnes' warm voice to reveal the wealth of emotions in the tunes themselves. But what's interesting is without it being noticeable to the listener, there are small but lush string sections, a few horns here and there, and a full-on four-piece rock band. Her reading of Billy Joel's "So It Goes" is virtually a reinvention of the song. She offers this song from a heart that has been cracked enough times, to paraphrase her friend Cohen, that it has been flooded with light. But it's the songs with Bramhall that are the masterpieces here; they reveal the subtle, bluesy textures of Texas and the strength in expressing one's vulnerability to forces one does not understand, such as on "The Panther." As if to underline the evidence, there is a vocal duet between them on Eddy Arnold's country swing gem "You Don't Know Me" that rivals Ray Charles' version for pure, expressive passion. With her stunning rendition of Arlo Guthrie's "Patriot's Dream," she is backed by a folk music symphony orchestra, with Guthrie himself lending a guest vocal as well as Blondie Champlin and Kenny Edwards, with a Carmen accordion appearance by Van Dyke Parks. The set ends with a piano trio reprise of the title track that wraps all the magic up into a circle, as if these songs were a cycle of mystery, sensuality, and imagination from the very beginning. And, of course they were; Warnes isn't capable of anything less. Welcome back, Jennifer Warnes; you've been missed. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
It took Jennifer Warnes five years to construct a follow-up to Famous Blue Raincoat, and she...didn't come up with a unifying concept as simple and workable as recording a set of songs by Leonard Cohen. She did find some excellent covers, including Todd Rundgren's "Pretending To Care" and The Waterboys' "The Whole Of The Moon," that may have been new to her listeners, and got a song from Donald Fagen ("Big Noise, New York"). She also did some of her own writing and got participation from Cohen on "Way Down Deep." All of which is to say that there are some worthy selections on The Hunter... ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Jennifer Warnes was familiar with Leonard Cohen from a tour of duty as one of his backup singers in the early '70s, but this collection of Cohen's songs must have shocked her AM radio fans who knew her from her '70s country-pop hits and her movie themes, if they were even able to connect the woman who sang "It's the right time of the night for makin' love" with the one who declared "First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin" over stinging guitar work by Stevie Ray Vaughan on the opening track here. As that pairing suggests, Warnes wisely took a tougher, more contemporary approach to the arrangements than such past Cohen interpreters as Judy Collins used to. Where other singers tended to geld Cohen's often disturbingly revealing poetry, Warnes, working with the composer himself and introducing a couple of great new songs ("First We Take Manhattan" and "Song of Bernadette," which she co-wrote), matched his own versions. The high point may have been the Warnes-Cohen duet on "Joan of Arc," but the album was consistently impressive. And it went a long way toward reestablishing Cohen, whose reputation was in a minor eclipse in the mid-'80s. A year later, with the way paved for him, he released his brilliant comeback album I'm Your Man. For Warnes, the album meant her first taste of real critical success: suddenly a singer who had seemed like a second-rate Linda Ronstadt now appeared to be a first-class interpretive artist. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'Shot Through the Heart'
Release Date 1/1/1979
Tracks 10
Label Arista
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Having compromised on her Arista debut and gotten a hit single for her trouble, Jennifer Warnes took charge of the recording of her second Arista album, co-producing it and writing three songs, including the title track. It was hard to miss the point when Warnes covered Dionne Warwick's 1963 hit "Don't Make Me Over" (written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David) that she was finished with having people tell her what to do. On her own, her taste was impeccable, her song choices including the work of Jesse Winchester, Bob Dylan, and Stephen Foster, and her own songwriting was good, too. She also managed to satisfy the commercial expectations aroused by her previous album, with "I Know a Heartache When I See One" rising into the country Top Ten and the pop and adult contemporary Top 40. (She also made it into all three charts with "Don't Make Me Over" and into the pop and AC charts with "When the Feeling Comes Around.") She proved an adept producer, achieving a smooth pop/rock sound. With session stars like Andrew Gold aboard, Warnes succeeded in making what sounded like the great lost Linda Ronstadt album. Granted, she handled strong material like Dylan's "Sign on the Window" better than Ronstadt could, but Ronstadt had originated this kind of '70s L.A. country/pop/rock style, and it was impossible to do it without sounding like you were copying her. Maybe that was why, despite three chart singles, the album wasn't a big commercial success. In turn, the disappointing sales may have injured Warnes' relationship with Arista. Instead of releasing another new album, Arista followed with a best-of, and Warnes didn't release another new album until 1987. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Jennifer Warnes's fourth album was her Arista Records debut and the first LP on which she was billed under her full name. The album appears to be a classic case of commercial compromise: Eight of its ten tracks were produced by horn player Jim Price, who had been producing Joe Cocker lately. The other two, "Right Time of the Night" and "I'm Dreaming," were produced by country producer Jim Ed Norman, and both were released as singles. One can infer that Arista didn't hear a single in the Price songs and sent Warnes back into the studio, or that the label hoped the L.A.-based and -bred singer could cross over to country music with the right song. If the latter was the case, Arista was right: "Right Time" hit the Top 40 in the Country charts as well as the Top Ten in the pop charts and the top of the Easy Listening charts. ("I'm Dreaming" charted pop and hit the Easy Listening Top Ten.) The singles, while the most accessible tracks on the album, were also the least impressive. "Right Time," with its coy sexuality ("You and me, baby, we can think of something to do"), was one of those embarrassingly awkward erotic songs, almost on a par with the Starland Vocal Band's wretched "Afternoon Delight," which had been a hit the year before. On the other hand, the bulk of the album consisted of well-sung mediocre L.A. pop material, the highlights being covers of "Love Hurts" and the Rolling Stones' "Shine a Light." As her previous albums had demonstrated Warnes had a warm, inviting voice and a strong sense of phrasing. But she suffered from the basic disadvantage all interpretive singers faced in the 1970s: the paucity of good available songs. Minus its singles, Jennifer Warnes might have been a more consistent album, but it probably wouldn't have sold. And for the 29-year-old Warnes, her third record deal must have seemed like her last chance. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
With a plethora of producers over the years -- including Martin Cooper, Al Capps, Stewart Levine, Rob Fraboni, Jim Ed Norman, Val Garay, and Jim Price -- it is this obscure album produced by the Velvet Underground's John Cale that captures a very special moment for Jennifer Warnes. A beautiful faded cover photo with the word "Jennifer" floating across the top, this album stands as landmark interpretation by the artist, and a production for Cale as important as his first album for the Modern Lovers. Don't expect the sound to be anything like the quagmire of Velvetsonics that Cale allowed the legendary members of Jonathan Richman's band to create. This is a pure pop album. "Needle and Thread" is a replica of what Motown producer Frank Wilson was doing exactly at this moment in time with the new Supremes, and "Be My Friend" is Diana Ross from this same period, by way of songwriter Paul Rodgers from Free. As A&R for Warner Bros., Cale explores avenues here unavailable to him when putting together A&M's David Kubinec album in 1979. Cale doing Motown is quite a revelation, and is equally impressive. Of the many recorded covers of Jimmy Webb's underground classic "P.F. Sloan," the one on Jennifer is arguably the best, but she goes a step further on the second "Webb" title included here -- "All My Love's Laughter" is outstanding. Jackson Browne's "These Days" has instrumentation that could have been culled off an early Marianne Faithfull album -- remember Browne contributed material to Nico's first solo outing, with heavy contributions from Cale as well. With only one original composition by Cale, a song titled "Empty Bottles," this recording is as much his showcase as it is Warnes', rich in both sincerity and performance, and not as avant garde as his later Nico recordings. As with her first album on Parrot where she covered the Bee Gees, Jennifer opens with Barry Gibb's "In the Morning," then closes by taking the grand sounds of Procol Harum and subduing them, giving the world a different "Magdalene (My Regal Zonophone." This would have to rate with Famous Blue Raincoat as Warnes' most substantial album -- but having had less attention, it is one of the hidden treasures of rock and should be sought out by fans of Cale as well as those of this enigmatic artist. These recordings of songs by Donovan Leitch, Webb, Free, Procol Harum, Cale, Gibb, Jackson Browne, and Warnes' own title, "Last Song," provide an insight -- not only to the talent of this gifted artist, but in flavoring those melodies in a way you have not heard them before. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide
'See Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Heal Me'
Release Date 1/1/1968
Tracks 11
Label Parrot
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
By the time of the release of her second album, Jennifer (still going by only her first name), in addition to her appearances with the Smothers Brothers, had taken over a prominent role in the L.A. production of Hair, which Parrot Records played up by having her lead off the record with "Let the Sunshine In" (which, unlike the 5th Dimension, who scored a hit with it, she sang with the apocalyptic verses intact) and "Easy to Be Hard" from the musical. Guitarist/comedian Mason Williams, who had jumped to fame on the Smothers Brothers show with his instrumental hit "Classical Gas" (and featured Jennifer on his 1968 LP The Mason Williams Ear Show), turned up here to accompany her on his "Saturday Night at the World" and, of all things, an excerpt from Donizetti's Don Pasacale. Otherwise, producer Al Capps followed the first album formula of having Jennifer cover contemporary material, including songs by the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Jacques Brel, and, as the title indicated, the finale from the Who's new rock opera Tommy. This time, though, the filler that marred the first album was gone, and Jennifer had grown as a singer primarily by learning not to over-sing. By toning down the histrionics, she sounded more involved emotionally, and with arrangements that had more of a rock edge, she even got to do some belting, which demonstrated the power of her voice. Like her first album, her second was not a popular success; unlike her first, it deserved to be. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'I Can Remember Everything'
Release Date 1/1/1968
Tracks 11
Label Parrot
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
I Can Remember Everything, the debut album by 21-year-old Jennifer (as she is billed) is a product of the eclectic pop trend of the late '60s, fostered by the Beatles' dabblings in music-hall whimsy and classical music on albums like Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Producer Martin Cooper favors arrangements beginning with isolated acoustic instruments -- a bass or a conga drum or a harpsichord -- to underlie Jennifer's alto, with strings or other instruments joining in as the song goes on. The selections include one each from the Bee Gees, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones, along with a clutch of mediocrities written by Cooper or published by Martin Cooper Music. Actually, though, Jennifer is less interesting on familiar tunes like "Chelsea Morning" and "Here, There and Everywhere," which she tends to over-sing in an affected way. On the forgettable stuff, she is more at ease, and the album demonstrates that she can be an effective, emotive interpreter, sometimes suggesting Janis Ian, sometimes Petula Clark. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
