Ryan's Reviews

By the end of the 1980s, Bette Midler had done remarkably well in both her singing and acting career, with songs like "Wind beneath my Wings" from "Beaches" which Bette had also starred in, to films like "Down and Out in Beverly Hills", "Ruthless People", "Outrageous Fortune", "Big Business", and even one of the main characters in Disney's "Oliver & Company". Something Bette hadn't done, since 1983, was release a new album that wasn't a) a studio album, b) a live album or c) a soundtrack. That would all change on 4 September 1990 when her seventh studio album since 1972's "The Divine Miss M" was released on Atlantic Records. According to Aunty Wiki, "Some People's Lives" "became the biggest commercial success of Midler's musical career." Following on the heels of one of her most iconic songs, "Wind beneath my Wings", this must have been amazing. As A...

Come 22 November 1988, when the original soundtrack for "Beaches" was released on Atlantic Records, Bette Midler the Divine Miss M was practically on top of the world. She had followed up her 1979 classic "The Rose" with the somewhat less successful "Jinxed!" in 1982 and it seemed like her acting career in Hollywood was all but finished. "No Frills" her 1983 album had been a Top 10 in various countries throughout Europe but was less successful commercially in the US. In 1985 she released her stand-up performance album "Mud Will Be Flung Tonight!" which I highly recommend if you're a fan of her comedy. Check out both of those albums. I have never seen "Jinxed!" In 1986, thanks to a contract with Disney, Bette's acting career entered what I will probably describe as a Renaissance, with films like "Down and Out in Beverly Hills" and "Ruthless People", followed by "Outrageous Fortune" in 1987 ...

Late 1985 saw the release of a new album from the Divine Miss M, not to mention someone who's been a fan of her music more or less since the year 1998 (the first Bette albums I ever heard: the 1996 version of "Experience the Divine: Greatest Hits" and the underrated 1998 classic "Bathhouse Betty".) Following on from 1983's "No Frills" (which really deserved more than what it got), the new album was in fact a comedy album consisting mostly of spoken word. The closest you get to something like this in Bette's catalogue is the 1977 release "Live at Last". In a sense, this could almost be a sequel. (There's less spoken dialogue in "Divine Madness" and "The Rose" is a movie soundtrack.) The album was called "Mud Will Be Flung Tonight!" (Note: an emphasis on the word "Will" there). It was recorded 30 April and 1 May at one of Bette's performances at Budd Friedman's Improvisation in Los Ang...

The year 1983 can't have been one of the easiest years of Bette Midler's long and distinguished career. She had netted herself the rock film classic "The Rose" in 1979, inspired by the life of Janis Joplin, followed up by the live album and film "Divine Madness", but then "Jinxed!" happened in 1982. According to a story Bette did with Time in 1987, apparently no film offers were forthcoming after "The Rose". The experience of "Jinxed!" resulted in Bette having a nervous breakdown. The following year she released "No Frills" on Atlantic Records, her label since the debut release of "The Divine Miss M" in 1972. In America, it became her second lowest charting album to date, behind 1979's "Thighs and Whispers" (released the same year as "The Rose" which yielded one of her all time biggest singles). While it peaked at #60 on the US Billboard 200, and lower still at #71 on Canada Top Albums...