How Great a Singer Is Barbra Streisand? Just Check Out Our Playlist!

To Barbra Streisand’s long list of credits as singer, actress, director, songwriter, producer, political activist and contributor to the economic lexicon (see: “the Streisand effect”), she has now added "memoirist," thanks to her 970-page autobiography, My Name Is Barbra.

But the music—the singing—has arguably been the anchor of her career, and perhaps her greatest gift to the world. The classical pianist Glenn Gould wrote that “the Streisand voice is one of the natural wonders of the age, an instrument of infinite diversity and timbral resource.” It can be supple, thundering, mellow, sinuous, brassy, rounded, gorgeous.  

Streisand has a number of signature classics (“People,” “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” “The Way We Were,” “Guilty”), but her taste and talent have been adventurous and, for the most part, deeply edifying. She's one of the rare artists who makes you want to both stand in awe and melt into a puddle. This, you can imagine, is hard to do at the same time.

Here’s a playlist that will let you sample the many moods, and modes, of Streisand. 

"Miss Marmelstein" (1962)

Streisand was only 19 when she appeared on Broadway in the musical I Can Get It for You Wholesale— and stopped the show with this number, the comic romantic lament of an unmarried secretary. The humor, the surprising way of shaping  a lyric and the soaring, swooping vocal pyrotechnics were already in place. She followed this with the stage production of Funny Girl, and after that she was off to Hollywood. What was she going to do, wait around to play Miss Hannigan in Annie? Although she did record a bossa-nova-tinged version of that show’s big hit, “Tomorrow.”

"Napoleon" (1962)

Early in her career, Streisand often performed novelty numbers (“Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf”) and largely forgotten Broadway songs. “Napoleon,” which she performed in a live club set that ultimately became the 2022 album Live at the Bon Soir, was introduced by Lena Horne in a 1950s show called Jamaica. A tongue-in-cheek salute to obscurity  (“Napoleon’s a pastry/ Bismarck is a herring”), it's performed by Streisand with an amused but emphatic swagger. She swings through the lyrics with the skill of a trapeze artist.

 "Mother" (1971)

Six years after Bob Dylan went electric at Newport, Streisand went pop-rock with two albums in one year, Stony End and Barbra Joan Streisand. (Why hasn’t an enterprising music journalist tried to make sense of the connection between these seismic events?) Both albums show Streisand’s strong-willed determination to move beyond show tunes and the American Songbook — proving to the world,  she writes, that “I could change with the times.”  Barbra Joan includes her oddly memorable cover of “Mother,” John Lennon’s cathartic wail about the traumas of his childhood. Streisand isn’t one to wail: She forges through this psychodrama with sheer lung power and piercing high notes.  Lennon moves you to pity, Streisand to submission.  

By the way, Streisand writes in My Name Is Barbra that Dylan once sent her a note telling her she was his favorite star, and that he wrote "Lay, Lady, Lay" with her in mind. One can dream.

"Simple Man" (1974)

One of Streisand’s most understated performances — many have complained over the years that there aren’t enough of them — this Gram Nash cover can be found on the album Butterfly, which comes from the era of Streisand's relationship with one-time hairstylist Jon Peters. (He told her she reminded him of a butterfly. Hence the title.) Peters, who was played by Bradley Cooper in a funny extended cameo in Licorice Pizza, is credited as producer, although Streisand writes that he was out of his depth in a recording studio and she ended up handling key parts of the job.  The album remains a very uneven mix of tracks — David Bowie described her version of “Life on Mars?” as "atrocious" — but her self-harmonizing on “Simple Man” has a crystalline loveliness. It floats like a… you know.

"Lazy Afternoon" (1975)

One of Streisand’s most seductive (and overlooked) performances, this is another Broadway rarity, first sung by Kaye Ballard in The Golden Apple. The suggestion to record it, Streisand writes, came from "director Francis Coppola... over a sukiyaki dinner.”  So now you know. It’s an indolent, playful, lulling dream of sexual pleasure, invoking a pastoral landscape that breathes and sighs  with nature’s erotic impulses. The album also includes one of Streisand's most powerful ballads, “Letters That Cross in the Mail” — the performance is practically saturated with emotion. Although it might not make sense to anyone raised on email, texting and ghosting. Just Google "Postal Service."

"Auf dem Wasser zu singen" (1976)

Perhaps you weren’t aware that Streisand released an album of arias, Classical Barbra? She even ventured to sing — in German! — this delicate Schubert song about a boat drifting along the water as the light fades. (It’s a metaphor for the passing of life, no matter whether it’s performed by Renee Fleming or, in a remote future, Grimes.)  Streisand sings it very appealingly, with a light rhythmic bounce. Pianist Gould, despite his intoxication with her singing, wasn’t  completely over the moon about the album — he suggested she try a Bach cantata next time. 

"Woman in Love" (1980)

Improbable as it might seem, or maybe it's not improbable at all, one of Streisand's very best albums is Guilty, a pop-disco collaboration with Barry Gibb. You won't necessarily want to dance to it, but the music throughout has a definite groove — a shimmering energy — and Streisand's voice is extraordinarily supple. On the lush, brooding "Woman in Love," she rides on waves of melody, soaring and cresting, soaring and cresting. It's flawless, fabulous. And yet, Streisand writes, she resisted the song because she couldn't make sense of Gibb's rather vague lyrics. In the end, though, “I thought, F--- it. Forget the words. Just do it.”

"No Wonder" from Yentl (1983)

Streisand devotes many pages of her memoir to the making of Yentl, and you can’t really blame her. It’s one of the greatest original movie musicals of the past 50 years, with a score by Michel Legrand and Marilyn and Alan Bergman (all of it sung by Streisand alone), and yet she wasn’t nominated for Best Director — a slight, she writes, that left her “devastated.” (In addition, Isaac Bashevis Singer, whose story "Yentl the Yeshiva Boy" was the source of the movie, was upset that Streisand had the nerve to add songs to it. The Nobel laureate should have gotten out more often.)

“No Wonder,” in which Streisand’s Yentl (disguised as a boy) observes Avidgor (Mandy Patinkin) being doted on by his intended (Amy Irving), is possibly the single best number. Streisand sings it with astute, rueful humor and a touch of heartache. And she's filmed the scene, set around a crowded, busy dinner table, with a warm intimacy. It's as good as anything from Funny Girl or On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, the movie musicals she made with directors William Wyler and Vincente Minnelli.

"Tell Him" with Celine Dion (1997)

There's a reason My Name Is Barbra is almost 1,000 pages long. One of Streisand's dozens of celebrity duets (everyone from Judy Garland to Willie Nelson), this glossy pop hit with Céline Dion has a complicated, highly detailed backstory.

Well: At the 1997 Academy Awards ceremony, Natalie Cole was expected to perform “I Finally Found Someone,” the theme from Streisand’s The Mirror Has Two Faces. “Someone” itself was a Streisand duet with Bryan Adams, and she and Adams were both nominees for writing it, but she was too nervous to perform the number on stage. Cole, however, bowed out of the broadcast because of illness, and Dion was recruited to sing instead. Streisand was seated in the audience, enjoying the moment when Michael Kidd, choreographer of her 1969 film Hello Dolly, was receiving an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement. Then, she writers, “I suddenly started hemorrhaging. (I was having more problems with endometriosis.) I quickly got up and rushed to the bathroom.” She missed Dion’s performance as a result,  but afterward apologized and told her: "We have to find a song to sing together.”

And so we have “Tell Him.” Dion kicks it off, singing with trembling innocence about a romantic crisis, then Streisand enters, taking on the role of a wiser, stronger woman more experienced in such messes — a doyenne of love. The song is melodic but also a bit histrionic. It sounds as if it could be sung in Italian through microphones. But, long story short, the harmonies of these two superstars are irresistible.

"Carefully Taught/Children Will Listen" (2006)

Streisand was born too late for the Golden Age of the American musical, but anything by Rodgers and Hammerstein, whose scores glow  with lyrical sincerity,  seems to connect with her emotionally.  “Carefully Taught,” a song about racial tolerance, is one of the lesser numbers from South Pacific, but on the Live in Concert 2006 album Streisand performs it delicately, with just the lightest dramatic punch to sell its message. “Taught” is nicely paired with “Children Will Listen” by modern musical master Stephen Sondheim. Unlike many Sondheim songs, whose standards tend to have an ironic sting that isn't necessarily in Streisand's wheelhouse, this one is sweetly anodyne, and she performs it with rich authority.

And that’s just the tip of the Streisberg.