A new Lesley Gore album was probably not among the things you might have been expecting in 2005. But here she is. The onetime teen sensation, the “sweetie-pie from Tenafly” as 1960s disc jockeys dubbed the Jersey girl with the big bright voice, is 59 years old and has released her first album since 1976. It’s a pleasant surprise, a low-key collection of jazzy ballads and mature pop with warm but melancholy arrangements.
She has good luck with her collaborators, Engine Company label founder Blake Morgan (who produced the disc) and his colleague Mike Errico, who both play on the album and contribute two songs each. There are traces of Nina Simone and Dinah Washington in Gore’s phrasing now, which might not have worked on “It’s My Party” or “Maybe I Know”, but they sound fine on a recalibrated reading of “You Don’t Own Me”, arguably her greatest teen hit. In a setting that emphasizes its moody minor-key verses and downplays the anthemic chorus, it sounds more like a compromise between old lovers than a youthful declaration of independence.
The album also revisits “Out Here On My Own”, from Fame, which Gore co-wrote with her brother Michael (it was a hit for Irene Cara). But the brightest spot is a new Gore composition, the lightly bouncing “Not The First”, which would have been right at home in her old Brill Building haunts.
