★★★★★
A singer, actress and comedienne, the multi-faceted Midler is clearly among the last of a vanishing breed: a throwback to what many feel was a golden age before Las Vegas became just another gaudy tourist trap. There's a tangible sense of a bygone era during this 2010 glitz-filled extravaganza from Caesar's Palace, as if Bette is busting out in front of an audience of Rat Packers and presidents...
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
Craftily repackaged as to suggest a new album with Ms Midler airbrushed on the sleeve, this release pulls together a selection of American standards from previous albums to remind us of what the star does best, coaxing the listener into a familiar lyric with a fresh interpretation of her very own. Her delivery is patently sincere, and newly written anecdotal notes on each song reveal what each one means to her...
- www.bbc.co.uk
2013-04-23
★★★★★
If Bette Midler's intention with this album was to redirect listeners back to Peggy Lee's catalog, then the Divine Miss M certainly succeeded. I couldn't wait to turn Midler off and turn Lee on after listening to this mediocre tribute album. For better or worse, Midler seems to be working on a series here with producer Barry "Copacabana" Manilow. The duo tackled the works of Rosemary Clooney in 2003 with, often, strained results. And their luck isn't much better here...
- www.soundspike.com
2010-12-07
★★★★★
Timed with her current year-plus run at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, the Divine Miss M gives us a 19-track blast from the past, culling her biggest hits, notably Wind Beneath My Wings, Friends and The Rose, plus her usual sassy, brassy versions of old-school numbers like Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy and The Glory of Love. This is probably the next best thing to seeing Midler live in Vegas.
- www.hour.ca
2010-11-09
★★★★★
This DualDisc Series release (CD on one side, DVD on the other) is the second in Midler's tribute reunion series with her old piano player Barry Manilow, who also produced and arranged Midler's last album, Bette Midler Sings the Rosemary Clooney Songbook. Midler pulls it off again, giving the brassy, Jewish Midler touch to Fever, He's a Tramp and Big Spender...
- www.hour.ca
2010-11-02
★★★★★
For Bette Midler, a greatest-hits package, with its sweeping portrait of her 21-year career, bares all. Her genre-hopping diversity, from covering John Prine ("Hello in There"), to campier, kitschier fare ("Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy"), to pop croons like "The Rose," makes her popular with a broad audience ? indeed, she was Johnny Carson's last late-night guest. But Experience the Divine also evens her out to a kind of fuzzy blandness. What's divinity got to do with it...
- ew.com
2010-08-27
★★★★★
From anybody else, the second live album in under four years would have me charging unfair trade practice. From Bette it has me begging for intros--which rarely forthcome on a concert-flick "soundtrack" that plays better on screen than turntable. Streisand's claque is right--she's a sloppy singer, which without the diversionary shtick of Live at Last sometimes matters. On anything she's perfected in the studio, for instance...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-17
★★★★★
Reclaiming her integrity if not--waddaya want?--her edge ("I'm Beautiful," "Lullabye in Blue").
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-17
★★★★★
Side two does seven great songs with umpteen instruments in just over fifteen minutes, a perfectly amazing miracle of concision. But side one is less than hot. Two (why two?) just-wrong Johnny Mercer songs lead into a properly excessive intro to Ann Peebles's "Breaking Up Somebody's Home" that is destroyed inside of two minutes by an improperly excessive, funkless production. Bette's overstatement works on "Surabaya Johnny" and "I Shall Be Released," but I've heard better...
- www.robertchristgau.com
2009-07-10
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