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LOVE MAKES THE WORLD
Carole King
(Koch)
There's good news and bad news about King's first album in nearly a decade.
First of all, the fact that the incomparable songwriter has a new album out is reason enough to cheer.
It's just too bad she hooks up with such a milquetoast group of guests -- Celine Dion, Wynton Marsalis, Babyface, David Foster and fellow songwriter Carole Bayer Sager -- on this rare occasion.
Let's put it this way: Her benchmark record, 1971's Tapestry, was an album my older sister and I coveted. This one's definitely for my mother.
Dion appears alongside King on The Reason, a track originally recorded for Dion's 1997 album Let's Talk About Love, while Babyface co-wrote and sings on the forgettable mid-tempo track You Can Do Anything. Marsalis plays trumpet on the tepid I Wasn't Gonna Fall In Love, while Foster co-wrote and co-produced It Could Have Been Anyone, a song suitable to run over movie credits and not much else.
Highlights include the more soulful trio of the title track, I Don't Know and Oh No Not My Baby.
K.D. Lang also improves the standings on her duet with King on the stripped-down ballad, An Uncommon Love.
Track Listing
1. Love Makes The World
2. You Can Do Anything
3. The Reason
4. I Wasn't Gonna Fall In Love
5. I Don't Know
6. Oh No Not My Baby
7. It Could Have Been Anyone
8. Monday Without You
9. An Uncommon Love
10. You Will Find Me There
11. Safe Again
12. This Time