Michael Ball: As romantic as the songs he sings

The first thing that strikes you about English singer and stage actor Michael Ball is the richness of the vibrato. His ls, ms, and rs quiver as much as his vowels, and the effect is more often than not like the undulation of so many wavelets under skin (think Sarah Vaughan or Judy Garland). Of course, like other good things, it has been spoofed (as much as Patti LuPone’s no-consonants [i.e., ngongo] style of singing) in one or two "Forbidden Broadway" recordings. But Michael Ball sans the parody is an aural experience than which there are few more delightful. His is a kind of voice that reminds you of those romantic and debonair heroes of black-and-white cinema.

A romantic leading man is, indeed, what we get in A Love Story, Michael Ball’s latest album. The concept of the album is explained by Ball himself in the liner notes: "The idea for this album came from my experience performing a one man show ‘alone together’ at the Donmar Warehouse in 2001. In it I tried to tell the story of a performer’s life, his relationships with lovers and family, his audience, his work, God and himself, through the medium of contemporary music. It was the sound track to a life and it got me thinking about what I wanted my next recording to be about. I hit on the idea of trying to tell the story of a doomed love affair using the same vocabulary."

As such, the album is essentially theatrical. Thematically, it recalls Ball’s first major Broadway show Aspects of Love, composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, where three generations of lovers are entangled in relationships filial, erotic, and incestuous. In design, it has affinities with Tell Me on a Sunday, another Lloyd Webber composition, which tells the ups but mostly the downs of one woman’s search for love in the big city, and the more recent Crazy for You, a musical made by piecing together the songs of George Gerswhin; and as the songs come from different eras and composers, one can also see traces of the "psychiatrist segment" of Barbra Streisand’s The Concert (the album is co-produced by one of Streisand’s former music directors Simon Franglen).

The songs in the album form a narrative of love discovered, consummated, tested, lost, and renewed, and include the entire spectrum of experiences wrought by being in love (titillation, anticipation, fulfillment, obsession, frustration, despair, resignation). The thesis is summed up in the penultimate song in the album, Rodgers and Hart’s I Wish I Were In Love Again: The broken dates, / the endless waits, / the lovely loving and the hateful hates, / the conversations with the flying plates, / I wish I were in love again. A Love Story is thus properly subtitled The Soundtrack to a Love Affair; it is an affirmation of love’s value despite its "strange mutations" which make us hate it.

Apart from the aforementioned Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney classic, the album includes This Guy’s in Love with You (Burt Bacharach), What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life (Michel Legrand), Didn’t We (Jimmy Webb), and She Makes My Day (Robert Palmer)–quite an eclectic mix, but all carrying Ball’s characteristic brand of vocal acting. Witness God Give Me Strength and This Guy’s In Love–Bacharach songs both, antipodal in sentiment, songs for two personae. Ball manages to bring out the anguish in the one and the diffidence in the other. Interesting too is I Wish You Love, here rendered without irony, in a relaxed and bluesy way, which listeners may want to compare to Streisand’s sarcastic interpretation in the Je M’appelle Barbra album. The collection ends with a fun rendition of Al Jonson’s Me and My Shadow. The twist is that Ball’s duet partner is Antonio Banderas, with whom Ball shared the stage in Celebration, a tribute concert for Lloyd Webber in 1999, where Ball got a wink from Ronan Keating. As a postlude, the two sing a verse of the song in Spanish. These songs can be enjoyed on a "stand-alone" basis, but gain poignancy when they are taken together and listened in succession and in order.

Fans of "traditional pop" and "easy listening" will be more than satisfied with A Love Story, and followers of Michael Ball in the Philippines will welcome it as proof that their favorite is still in top form. True, at certain registers the little cracks in his voice are audible, but ring it still does; and although he has gotten chubbier since his days as Marius in Les Miserables, the dimples remain and the curly blond locks are still as thick.

Michael Ball has been in the music scene for 20 years, but A Love Story, to my knowledge, is his first widescale release in the Philippines. Some of his earlier solo albums (e.g., Michael Ball, The Movies, The Musicals, and Centre Stage) were available on a limited or special order basis and only in selected outlets (specially at the late lamented CD Warehouse). A Love Story, then, is a timely release and, finally, is an auspicious introduction to a glorious, gorgeous voice.