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Tony Bennett:At 89. he changes pop
Tony Bennett: At 89, by sticking to his sound, and working with Lady Gaga, he changes pop
BY Jim Farber, New York Daily News
See link for entire article and film clip
Tony Bennett isn’t impressed with the music of the moment.
“The new songs that are on the charts right now, they won’t last,” he tells the Daily News. “Today, it’s all about making the big buck, to be heard on the radio, to sell a million records. And then it’s forgotten.”
Those may sound like the words of a classic grump, consigned to the past. But Bennett isn’t some bitter outsider, bitching about the current pop scene. He’s an of-the-moment player.
Bennett — who will blow out 89 candles on his birthday cake Monday — just completed a tour of the U.S. and Europe with Lady Gaga after selling out every show. Their live triumph followed their joint studio album, “Cheek to Cheek,” which opened at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200 last September, making Bennett by far the oldest person ever to achieve that feat. For a trifecta, a TV special featuring music from the album just picked up an Emmy nomination.
By pulling all this off, the Astoria-born artist has done something unprecedented. Instead of coming to pop culture late in life to try to fit in, he made pop culture come to him.
Bennett considers this vindication after a decades-long battle.
“The record business is set up to go very contemporary all the time,” he says. “I always thought that was foolish, because it’s a bigger audience if you play to everybody instead of just one group.”
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