Release date: Oct. 9, 2009

Love is the Answer is the brand new album from Barbra Streisand, a multiple Academy, Grammy, Emmy, and Tony award-winning artist. Having been named the top US female artist of all time (with 71 million albums sold in the US only), Streisand once again proves her talent and ability to make lyrics soar.

The album, in which she collaborated with Canadian jazz diva Diana Krall, jumped to the top of the charts only a week after being released and made Streisand the only artist in history to have a number 1 album in five consecutive decades.

The album is arranged by the luminous and legendary Johnny Mendel, a producer who Streisand has worked with many times during her illustrious career. Krall also perfects the sound by playing her distinctive piano tunes, and on the second-half of the album songs start stripping down to guitar, bass and drum accompaniments.

Other great songs on the list are Streisand’s unsurpassed interpretation of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”, “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” (first sung by Streisand when she was only 18), “Some Other Time” (made famous by Tony Bennett), “If You Go Away” (an English rendition of a famous French song, “Ne Me Quitte Pas” and “Where Do You Start?” (an exquisite song with poetic lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman).

Overall, the standard is too good to be true. If you are looking for a heaven-on-earth musical experience then the album is a must. When Billboard reported the shipment had jumped to 180,000 units in its first week, the only question left was, “Why doesn’t Babs do this more often?!” She owes us that much…