Love Him!

Except for a single release of the title song from her film , stayed away from the record racks for most of 1963, possibly dissatisfied with ' efforts to record and promote her with outdated concept albums of old at the same time that she was the reigning queen of Hollywood. But in the winter of 1963-1964, she returned with her first new LP in more than a year, , and it represented a whole new approach. The producer was her 21-year-old son, , and he attempted to bring his mother's musical style up to date by banishing the silly concepts and carefully choosing contemporary material he thought would suit her. He got songwriters and to pen the title song, a in which a woman gives another woman advice on the man she has lost to her. And the rest of the material dated either from the last few years or had recently been revived. Thus, for example, might be a 1948 copyright, but it had been a hit for in 1963. There were also songs associated with and appropriations from the charts. seemed to want to demonstrate that could sing a broader range of material than had been giving her, and she responded by throwing herself into performances of songs that had greater depth than those she usually sang. The approach didn't always work, but sounded much more engaged than she had on previous albums. The disc made the charts, but sales were difficult to estimate; in it just missed the Top 100, while in it climbed into the Top 40, a significant commercial comeback. ~ William Ruhlmann