Album of the Day — August 27
Frank Sinatra — Songs for Young Lovers
Frank Sinatra — Songs for Young Lovers
27.August.2020
Frank Sinatra
Songs for Young Lovers
1954
By any cultural metric, past, present, or future, Frank Sinatra was, is, and always will be a bad-ass.
Having sold around 150 million albums, not only is he a bad-ass, but he’s one of the most successful artists in music history.
And, yes, I did watch Alex Gibney’s epic Frank Sinatra doc on Netflix, Sinatra: All or Nothing at All.
By 1953, to say that Sinatra’s career was on the slide down would’ve been an understatement:
His last three albums at Columbia Records had failed to chart, so they dropped him.
His voice was a bit shot, and he was canceling shows.
He had taken up a high profile fling with Ava Gardner and divorced his wife.
He had to borrow money to pay his taxes.
But it was the double punch of his successful Oscar-winning turn in From Here to Eternity and his recent signing to Capitol Records, and this first album Songs for Young Lovers, that Sinatra’s career took a turn towards the man and legend we now know.
It starts here.
Believe it or not but Frank Sinatra was a pioneer of … wait for it, the concept album.
While signed to his former label, Columbia Records, Sinatra’s albums were often just hits/songs incongruously strung together. Given more creative freedom at Capitol Records, Songs for Young Lovers was a set of songs arranged around a specific idea. In this case, songs for young lovers (irony wasn’t a thing in the 50s).
Just a little short of 40, Sinatra had been through some stuff. And with that comes, if you’re lucky enough, maturity. And ‘Ol Blue Eyes was lucky, he’d grown up. Feeling more sure of himself, Sinatra took the charts he’d been using in Las Vegas for these songs and brought them to new his new Capitol Records producer Voyle Gilmore.
It was his foray into the burgeoning Las Vegas that Sinatra’s voice — and the man — had matured.
He was now singing with more confidence and doing it without losing any of his intimacy. It was also in Vegas that Sinatra began incorporating a little “jazz” to his sound.
It yet another fresh start, it’s on Songs for Young Lovers that Frank Sinatra established a relationship with conductor and arranger Nelson Riddle that would last for twenty years. Sinatra didn’t drop everything from the past. All of the arrangements here were by his old Columbia arranger, George Siravo — except for “Like Someone In Love,” which was done by Riddle.
The songs are all American Songbook standards. Today we might call this a “covers” album. Sinatra was a singer, not a songwriter, but he had a discerning eye. He knew what worked and what didn’t, and here he knew only the best would work — Rodgers and Hart, George and Ira Gershwin, and Cole Porter, etc.
The songs on Songs for Young Lovers had all been either previously recorded by other artists. Artists as varied as Fred Astaire, “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” Ethel Merman “I Get a Kick Out of You” and Sinatra even re-visited one of his own — a tune he recorded first with Tommy Dorsey, “Violets for your Furs” in 1941.
Before it was to be what it would become, Sinatra manages to give a shout out to cocaine on “I Get a Kick Out of You”:
Some may go for cocaine
I’m sure that if I took even one sniff
T’would bore me to riff
Yet, I get a kick out of you
Even though so many of these songs may sound too “old” or traditional by today’s standards, in the context of the American musical canon, these songs are legendary. And some are genuinely legendary, like “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” which before Sinatra had been covered by:
Fred Astaire
Billie Holiday
Artie Shaw
Bing Crosby
Charlie Parker
And then after Sinatra, the song was covered by:
Tony Bennett
Robbie Williams
Brian Wilson
Ella Fitzgerald
Van Morrison
After coming out of World War II, the mood in the 1950s was such that anyone’s album shouldn’t contain anything too dramatic (that would come in another fifteen years as Americans rebelled against Vietnam). Which is not to say that Songs for Young Lovers is a light romp, it’s just a little …airy and dreamlike. Which does capture the era — considered the most prosperous period in American history.
So if you’re looking for relationship drama and depth on this album, you won’t find it (allow me to suggest Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours). This record is all about l-o-v-e — love. Falling in love, which is, if you let it, a wonderful feeling.
And with Songs for Young Lovers, Sinatra, and co. capture that upbeat sentiment with the arrangements and song selections. But more miraculously is the album captures the mood of the country.
Songs for Young Lovers was recorded in 1953 (in one fuckin day!) and released in 1954.
Little did Frank Sinatra, or anyone else, know about the musical tumult that awaited them.
Also recorded in 1953 was a cover of Arthur Crudup’s “That’s All Right” by a young man in Nashville, Tennessee. That man was Elvis Presley. And within three years, music had fractured into two camps:
Music for “parents.”
Music for the “kids.”
You can probably put together which two men sat atop each throne.
CRITICS:
Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic wrote: “It was also one of the first — arguably the very first — concept album. Sinatra, Riddle, and producer Voyle Gilmore decided that the new album format should be a special event, featuring a number of songs arranged around a specific theme; in addition, the new format was capable of producing a more detailed sound, which gave Riddle more freedom in his arrangements and orchestrations. Songs for Young Lovers is a perfect example of this.”
Iman Lababedi at RockNYC said: “This is where Sinatra the Great comes into being, you can hear it happening first n “I’ve Got The World On A String” and then “I Get A Kick Out Of You” -certainly the swing and arrogance and exuberance that was gay divorcee Sinatra came to life. A legend was born.”
Frank Sinatra was not of my generation, and I suspect he’s not the generation of most people that may be reading this. But don’t kid yourself, that line from Frank Sinatra to Taylor Swift is shorter than you’ll want to admit. And it’s not just because of record sales.
Frank Sinatra created the template for what would become the mega-star of tomorrow, and it’s on this album that everything crystalizes for Frank Sinatra…and eventually, for us.
As long as people are falling in love, they will need a soundtrack. And there is almost none better than Songs for Young Lovers. Young lovers, old lovers, middle-aged lovers alike with an open mind will recognize both the album and Frank Sinatra, for what they are …legendary.