With a couple of re-titled reissues (
Hawaiian Wedding Song,
Canadian Sunset) in 1965 and a compilation (
Andy Williams' Newest Hits) in early 1966 to keep customers happy,
Andy Williams was able to take more than a year to craft a follow-up to
Dear Heart. When The Shadow of Your Smile appeared in the spring of 1966, it was, on the surface, a typical
Andy Williams album. It was titled after the year's Academy Award-winning Best Song (from The Sandpiper) and otherwise combining songs that, if not brand-new, had recently been hits for other artists, such as "Try to Remember" (
Ed Ames), "Somewhere" (
P.J. Proby), and "A Taste of Honey" (Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass), with old favorites like "That Old Feeling," "Peg O' My Heart," and "Bye Bye Blues." But there were notable changes in
Williams' approach. Two years after the British Invasion and the bossa nova craze, he acknowledged both movements with two covers each. From
the Beatles came "Michelle" and "Yesterday"; from
Antonio Carlos Jobim came "Meditation" and "How Insensitive." Of course, such material was not entirely foreign to
Williams, who had put a bossa nova version of "Begin the Beguine" on The Great Songs from "My Fair Lady" and Other Broadway Hits in 1964 and recorded
Under Paris Skies, an album that easily could have included "Michelle," had it been written yet, in 1960. But The Shadow of Your Smile also had a slower, more languorous feel than earlier
Williams albums, and it had more vocal risk-taking, particularly on the
Jobim numbers and in the long-held note at the end of "Somewhere." The alterations indicated that
Williams was not content to simply turn out the same sort of album over and over, and that he was paying attention to the changes in popular music around him.