The Best of Robert Goulet

Curb Records' 1990 release The Best of Robert Goulet is nothing more or less than a reissue of Robert Goulet's album After All Is Said and Done, originally released on the independent Artists of America label in 1976, except that the tracks have been re-sequenced and the collection has been given a new, and of course extremely deceptive, title. Record executive and producer Mike Curb offered Goulet the chance to return to record-making after several years without a contract, and Goulet responded by making the kind of album he used to make for Columbia Records in the '60s. There were big dramatic ballads, like "After All Is Said and Done" and "Something to Believe In," given full-scale orchestral and choral arrangements; low-key country-pop efforts like John Stewart's "July You're a Woman" and "Someone to Give My Love To"; remakes of then-recent easy listening hits like "You and Me Against the World" and "The Way We Were"; and a complement of show tunes, including "I Won't Send Roses" from Mack & Mabel and "The Green Years of Love" from Johnny Appleseed. Naturally, Goulet tipped his hat to Broadway songwriters Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, who gave him his big break in Camelot by recording the title song from their final collaboration, the movie musical The Little Prince. For the most part, Curb did not attempt to contemporize or otherwise adapt Goulet to the sound of pop circa 1976; rather, he seemed to intend to present Goulet as he was with the best and most appropriate material he could find. The result was an album that the singer's existing fans could enjoy, but that did nothing to expand his appeal to new audiences. Fourteen years later, it remains a respectable effort, except that anyone buying it with the expectation that it is some kind of hits compilation will feel cheated, and rightly so.