Barbra Streisand, the EGOT-winner and performer with six decades of perfection under her belt, unveiled a new album Friday called Release Me 2. It is a collection of previously unreleased tracks dating from 1962 to 2014, from songwriters like Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Randy Newman, and Carole King, and includes duets with notables like Willie Nelson and Kermit The Frog. It’s only 34 minutes and you should listen to it.
New Streisand material (even if it’s “old” new material) also means new Streisand interviews. Brooklyn’s favorite daughter recorded a podcast with Variety, in which the singer-actress-director-humanitarian admitted to still being in her nightie at 3pm. Clearly feeling at ease, she got into some other aspects of her personal life.
She claimed she’s only smoked pot one time her entire life, but “didn’t like the way it made me feel.” It’s a little ambiguous when and where it happened, but she said she “really did it” onstage as “part of my schtick” at the Los Angeles Forum in the 1970s. This is likely a reference to the shows in 1972 that were fundraisers for Senator George McGovern’s presidential campaign, later released as an album. For other substances, Streisand said she does enjoy beer now and then, as complement to Chinese or Italian food. (She also enjoys non-alcoholic beer.)
For years Streisand has been working on a memoir, and she said she’s got the end in view. She just has to write the final chapter called “The Epilogue,” but acknowledges that epilogue represents a quarter century of time. (The book’s pre-epilogue ending concludes, she said, with her marriage to James Brolin.)
When the book is done the 79-year-old will consider an official documentary on her life. However, she puts her foot down regarding a Bohemian Rhapsody-esque movie version of her life. “Not while I’m alive. No, no, no, no, no, no,” she said. “I get upset when something’s false or something’s a lie,” she added.
She also said she’s been tinkering around with her iPhone “finding locations” for a film project called Third Time Lucky. It’s something she’s worked on for years and years, she said, and it could be adapted to a grandmother’s role instead of an originally intended mother’s role.
When asked about young performers she’d like to duet with, she cited H.E.R., and said she was glad to have already recorded with Ariana Grande (“she’s a kick.”) Alas, she doesn’t listen to too much new music these days, but loves that her car, a seven-year-old Tesla given to her by her son Jason Gould, has a CD player.
“During the quarantine, the Mercedes was costing a few thousand dollars a month and we weren’t using it,” she explained, so “Jason said, ‘I’ll give you my car.’” He refused money for it, Streisand reported, instead saying “no, mom. You’ve given me so much.”
Why someone isn’t recording every single interaction between Barbra and her son I’ll never understand.
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