Pros: an almost flawless album sung by a flawless voice
Cons: the song "No More Tears"

It chagrins me to confess that I use to badmouth Barbra Streisand. I was an young idiot in those days. The album "Memories" proves I was a fool. The title song is no less a song of the gods. Almost every song on this album convinced me and still convinces me that Streisand is the great singer of our times. Not even Celine Dion or Steve Perry is better.

It is not to say that I could not praise better musicians such as Clapton, Wonder, Lennon and others, but who else sings like this creature. To be certain in her early days, many times she sang songs that failed to reveal her great voice. I once read Streisand was even humble enough to refer to her singing talent as "The Voice" as though she had nothing to do with it.

In this album you get to hear her sing songs that are suited for her great range. There are no songs as bad as the songs in her movie "A Star is Born". She sings a great song from Cats, a song Billy Joel wrote that excels his fine original rendition, a song she co-wrote with Paul Williams, "Evergreen", from which she's won an Academy Award, if memory serves be right and others. Her duet with Donna Summers "No More Tears (Enough is Enough) is the weakest song. Summers is great, but Streisand is weak in R&B songs like the great actor Richard Burton was weak doing anything but Shakespeare.

Streisand is also more than just a fairly good actor. Watch her movie with Richard Dreyfuss "Nuts" to see what I mean. Still her real talent is her ineffable singing voice. She is also marvelous when she sings in foreign languages. For the life of me I cannot recall the album wherein she sings classics in German, Italian, etc. I hope the true fans of Barbra Streisand can someday forgive me.