Jennifer Warnes

This ten-track compilation appeared at a time when Jennifer Warnes had released only two albums on Arista, resulting in five pop singles chart entries, including the Top Ten hit "Right Time of the Night" and the Top 40 hit "I Know a Heartache When I See One." This album contained four of the five, plus "Could It Be Love" and "Come to Me," which subsequently charted, a third newly recorded song, "Run to Her," two LP tracks composed by Warnes, and "It Goes Like It Goes," the theme from the movie Norma Rae, which had won an Academy Award. It is easy for consumers to pick it up assuming it contains later Warnes hits like "Up Where We Belong" and "(I've Had) The Time of My Life." In fact, since Warnes has been on many labels and several of her hits are one-off movie themes, there is no reliable compilation of her work; this works more as an overview of part of her career, not the whole thing.

When Jennifer Warnes recorded this 1987 collection of songs by Leonard Cohen, Cohen’s career was in undeserved decline and Warnes, who served as one of Cohen’s back-up singers in the early ‘70s, had been experiencing great success with a series of country-pop and romantic movie-themed adult-contemporary hits. “First We Take Manhattan” and “Ain’t No Cure for Love” turned out to be previews for Cohen’s comeback album, 1988’s I’m Your Man, and Warnes’ interpretations forced critics to seriously evaluate her as a talented, often overlooked and underrated singer. The arrangements are less quirky than Cohen’s own attempts at mainstream pop. Unlike Judy Collins whose Cohen covers emphasize his solemnity and stick to the songs’ folk roots, Warnes takes a liberal approach, unafraid to turn “Bird On a Wire” into a dance number, or locate the nite-jazz and cinematic heart lurking within the title track, or use guitarists such as Robben Ford and Stevie Ray Vaughan on “Manhattan” to make a grander musical point. Her duet with Cohen on “Joan of Arc” is riveting and grandiose. A classic, impeccably written, arranged, performed, sung, and produced throughout. This 20th Anniversary Edition adds four tracks, including a live version of “Joan of Arc” and a delicate read of “If It Be Your Will.”

Having compromised on her Arista debut and gotten a hit single for her trouble, Jennifer Warnes took charge of the recording of her second Arista album, co-producing it and writing three songs, including the title track. It was hard to miss the point when Warnes covered Dionne Warwick's 1963 hit "Don't Make Me Over" (written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David) that she was finished with having people tell her what to do. On her own, her taste was impeccable, her song choices including the work of Jesse Winchester, Bob Dylan, and Stephen Foster, and her own songwriting was good, too. She also managed to satisfy the commercial expectations aroused by her previous album, with "I Know a Heartache When I See One" rising into the country Top Ten and the pop and adult contemporary Top 40. (She also made it into all three charts with "Don't Make Me Over" and into the pop and AC charts with "When the Feeling Comes Around.") She proved an adept producer, achieving a smooth pop/rock sound. With session stars like Andrew Gold aboard, Warnes succeeded in making what sounded like the great lost Linda Ronstadt album.