Music Review: Barbra Streisand - The Ultimate Collection

Few pop singers can navigate the fickle waves of stardom for more than a decade. Barbra Streisand has successfully sailed those stormy seas for more than half a century. The Brooklyn-born diva’s album People hit number one in 1964. She reached that lofty summit again in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. With last year’s Love is the Answer, her collaboration with Canadian jazz star Diana Krall, Streisand became the first and only artist to ever score number-one albums in five consecutive decades.

A true renaissance woman—she’s an accomplished director and respected philanthropist and has won almost as many awards for acting as she has for singing, Streisand shows no signs of letting up. Earlier this year, she released One Night Only, a CD-DVD of her 2009 appearance in an intimate Greenwich Village nightclub. In December, she’ll reprise her role opposite Dustin Hoffman in Little Fockers, the sequel to the hit comedy movie Meet the Fockers.

Chronicling her recording career, The Ultimate Collection captures La Streisand at her best. The single-disc package features 18 songs drawn from her remarkable five decades in music. Included are Streisand’s signature songs “People,” from the musical Funny Girl, and “The Way We Were,” from the film of the same name in which she co-starred with Robert Redford. There are classic show tunes from Cats and West Side Story) and duets with the likes of Céline Dion and Neil Diamond. Living up to its name, The Ultimate Collection really is the ultimate way to experience Streisand.