Jeff Goldblum's new album ‘Still Blooming’ captivates old-style music with modern-day artists including Ariana Grande
By Amelie Da Costa
Actor Jeff Goldblum released an album featuring big stars such as Ariana Grande on Friday, April 25, titled ‘Still Blooming’ which has taken many by surprise.
The album itself consists of nine songs and 39 minutes of jazz and orchestra including remakes of big band classics, from Frank Sinatra and Vera Lynn.
Four songs on the album are purely jazz instrumentals, performed by the orchestra Golblum collaborates with to make music, The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra.
Following his recent appearance in the movie Wicked, he has collaborated with the two main stars, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, to remake popular songs from classic big bands.
Ariana pays ode to grandfather
Goldblum and Grande have done a rendition of the 1930s song I Don’t Know Why (I Just Do), which has been a popular song to remake across all decades of music.
The song is a single for the actor's album, with the most streams overall, scoring 826,376.
It includes their own twist of jazz and orchestra instead of just classical which was the genre of most of the remakes.
Grande takes a step away from the pop star persona and embodies a rich and smooth tone to compliment the backing of the track and give the song the old-style element, whilst keeping it quite modern.
The Wicked star mentioned to fans on Instagram that this particular song means a lot to her as her late grandfather used to sing it when she was a child - following the release.
Overall, the song still has a classical feel to it with more modern-day twists to make it more unique and authentic.
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Cynthia shines amongst star-studded features
Erivo performs vocally in the song “We’ll Meet Again” which is a remake of the 1939 song originally performed by Vera Lynn.
The Broadway performer approaches the song in a slow yet captivating way, showing off her vocals and blending well with the jazz and classical background.
The song hasn’t changed much from the original, however, it has its own separate personality that makes it slightly different.
Other stars who have featured on the album are Scarlett Johanson and Maiya Sykes, who also took on big band classic songs such as “Stella By Starlight” and “The Best Is Yet To Come.”
Goldblum himself performed the well-known song written by Cole Porter “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” which is a slow-moving song and embodies a different vocal range from the original song which was performed by Ella Fitzgerald.
It has been noticed that all the featured artists are females who sing songs that were originally sung by male performers, apart from Erivo, which makes the album more unique.
The consistent theme
The four instrumental songs within the new album consist of “The Grease Patrol,” “Blue Minor,” “Bye-Ya” and “Bouncing with Bud”.
All these songs consist of drums, piano, keyboard and saxophone, totalling sixteen minutes of the album.
The saxophone within all the songs is the main instrument and creates the rhythm and body with all the other instruments being the background orchestra.
Jeff Goldblum and The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra have embodied old classical music with a personal twist of jazz in an authentic way across the album.
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