Get the Party Started

AMG Review of Get the Party Started

Sharon Mawer
All Music Guide

Fresh from her appearance at the Glastonbury festival in the summer of 2007, Shirley Bassey released her album, Get the Party Started. Celebrating 50 years in the U.K. charts since she first arrived with a cover version of "The Banana Boat Song," here was a brand new Bassey album, with the tracks including "Big Spender," "I Who Have Nothing," "What Now My Love," "Kiss Me Honey," and wait a minute! This can't be a new album. These were all hits for the lady in the '50s and '60s. But brand new it certainly was, using the talents of remixers Bugz in the Attic and Mungolian Jet Set among others to create new, reworked, late-night electro dancefloor versions of some of her own and others' classic songs. When you've been in show business as long as Bassey has, one is bound to appeal to long-term fans to the detriment of gaining and alienating new, hip record buyers, but ever since her collaborations with Yello in the '80s and the Propellerheads on the hit "History Repeating" in the '90s, she's attempted to broaden her cabaret style image and this album succeeds in that respect, taking her to number six on the album charts, her first album to hit the Top Ten since the 25th Anniversary Album limited-edition vinyl compilation in 1978. The title track began life as the soundtrack to an advert for Marks & Spencer's Christmas range with Bassey starring in a James Bond style glossy campaign. "Get the Party Started," originally by Pink is given the Bassey diva treatment and begins to sound like a Bond theme itself; one almost forgets that it started as a straightforward party song by a 21st century pop-punk star. The one new track was "The Living Tree" which was released as the first single. Bassey has become almost synonymous with the early James Bond movie theme songs and here is "You Only Live Twice," which gets a make-over from Mark de Clive-Lowe. The final track is a slowed down, chilled out version of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and Bassey has certainly done that.