As the studio album followup to
Tony Bennett's breakthrough record,
I Left My Heart in San Francisco,
I Wanna Be Around had a lot to live up to, but since
San Francisco was a culmination of
Bennett's development, and not a fluke,
I Wanna Be Around turned out to be almost on a par with its predecessor. "The Good Life" and "I Wanna Be Around" became Top 20 hits, showing that
Bennett had somehow found a line into good new pop material, and there were also some excellent arrangements, courtesy of
Marty Manning, including a percussion-and-flute reading of "Let's Face the Music and Dance" that echoed the
Beat of My Heart album and a nod to the South American trend with
Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Quiet Nights (Corcovado)." A worthy successor. ~ William Ruhlmann