Lesley Garrett was around long before operatic divas
Katherine Jenkins and
Hayley Westenra, but she too fancied a stab at pop crossover and on
When I Fall in Love, she presented 12 songs, all very familiar and most of the them covered to death by a plethora of artists including most of those classical singers aspiring to be pop stars. This was, however, her first pure pop album with no classical overtones at all and indeed her first full price album for six years, a long time for anybody to be away in any genre, and it became her highest charting album by quite some way, just missing the Top Ten in February 2007. The songs were hardly groundbreaking, opening the album with "When I Fall in Love" of course and traveling through a repertoire of MOR hits including "The Way We Were," "He Was Beautiful," "Where Do I Begin" (from Love Story), and "Moon River," all sung in a clear, concise soprano voice that many young singers would do well to emulate. The songs that don't really work with
Garrett's voice, however, were the
Edith Piaf hit "Non Je Ne Regrette Rien," perhaps because
Garrett was so particularly English and this was one of those archetypal French songs, likewise the
Jacques Brel penned "Ne Me Quitte Pas," of which she did sing the English version, but it didn't quite have the feeling of even the Terry Jacks hit. She she was joined by
Michael Ball for a duet on "Come What May," the song from Moulin Rouge. The album closed with
Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World," a song so associated with the jazz legend that it's difficult to interpret in a superior way, although the song would actually get a new lease of life as a charity number one hit later in the year by
Eva Cassidy and
Katie Melua. ~ Sharon Mawer