It was Billboard‘s #1 single of 1974, and it also won an Oscar and a Golden Globe. Streisand recorded the song live with a full string section and with members of the Wrecking Crew backing her up. I guess it’s an 8? It seems completely fucking ridiculous to rank “The Entertainer.”) Streisand had wanted a minor-key song, but Hamlisch, after spending a ton of time on the song, ended up writing it as a major-key number anyway. (As a solo artist, Hamlisch peaked at #3 with “ The Entertainer,” a version of the old Scott Joplin ragtime instrumental that Hamlisch recorded for the 1973 movie The Sting. The film composer Marvin Hamlisch - one of only two people in history to win the full EGOT and the Pulitzer Prize - co-wrote “The Way We Were” with the married-couple lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman. Streisand starred in the movie with Robert Redford, and it was a big hit, but it’s mostly remembered for the title track, written from the point of view of Streisand’s character. Years later, they run into each other, and they both recognize that they’ve moved on with their lives. They meet, they fall in love, they marry, they have a kid, they divorce. Sydney Pollak’s 1973 movie The Way We Were tells the complete arc of a couple’s relationship. And when Streisand did get to #1, she did it with a song that more or less became a standard. She was always going to get to #1 herself it was just a question of when. (“Stoney End” peaked at #6 in 1970 it’s a 4.) Streisand turned down at least two songs, “ The Morning After” and “ Delta Dawn,” that eventually became #1 hits for other singers. Streisand worked with songwriters like Carole King and Laura Nyro, and the latter wrote “ Stoney End,” the song that got Streisand back onto the pop charts. And that early-’70s easy-listening version of pop fit Streisand’s particular skill set pretty well. By the early ’70s, big-time pop music had moved away from rock ‘n’ roll excitement and toward a sleepy version of sophistication. It’s the only time there’s ever been a tie for Best Actress.)īut pop music came to Barbra Streisand anyway. (Streisand actually shared that Oscar with Katharine Hepburn, who also won for The Lion In Winter. (It peaked at #5, and it’s a 5.) She made her film debut in the 1968 adaptation of Funny Girl, and she won a Best Actress Oscar for it - so she didn’t really need pop music. Streisand’s first hit, 1964’s “ People,” came from the musical Funny Girl. But she was still a star, and those records were still successful. She was singing showtunes and standards, which were pretty far removed from the rock ‘n’ roll zeitgeist. In the early years of her singing career, Streisand wasn’t really making pop music. So she broke through as a singer and as an actor at the exact same time. To hear just about everybody tell it, Streisand stole that show, and she sang so well on the soundtrack album that she got a record deal out of it. (That’s where she met Elliott Gould, her first husband, who was also in the cast.) Streisand was 19 when she debuted on Broadway. Eventually, Streisand won a talent contest and scored a couple of regular nightclub singing gigs, and those those gigs led to her getting cast in the 1962 musical I Can Get It For You Wholesale. She wanted to conquer Broadway, and she did.Īfter she graduated high school at 16, Streisand did everything she could to make it on Broadway, working as an usher and auditioning whenever she could. But it seems like pop stardom was never Streisand’s main goal it was simply a byproduct of where she ended up. To hear her tell it, the Brooklyn-raised Streisand always had a great voice. Plenty of singers cross over and become actors once they become famous. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.īarbra Streisand was inevitable.
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