Funny Girl Barbra Streisand Biography
Source(google.com.pk)Barbra Joan Streisand (pronounced STRY-sand; born Barbara Joan Streisand, April 24, 1942) is an American singer, film and theatre actress. She has also achieved note as a composer, liberal political activist, film producer, and film director. She has won two Academy Awards, ten Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, and a Peabody all by the age of 28. She is the only entertainer to have won all of these honors. In 2008 she was inducted as a Kennedy Center Honoree. Streisand received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2001.
She is one of the most commercially and critically successful female entertainers in modern entertainment history and one of the best-selling solo recording artists with more than 71 million albums sold in the US and 140 million albums sold worldwide. She is the highest ranking female artist on the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Top Selling Artists list and the only female recording artist in the Top Ten.
According to the RIAA, Streisand has a total of 31 Top Ten albums to her credit since 1963. Streisand has the widest span (46 years) between first and latest Top 10 albums of any female recording artist. With her 1993 album Back to Broadway, she became the only artist to achieve #1 albums in four different decades. She extended her record to five decades in October 2009, when the album Love Is the Answer debuted at the top of the Billboard 200. Streisand also holds the record for most Top 10 albums of any female recording artist. Her RIAA tally shows she has released 50 Gold albums, 30 Platinum albums, and 13 Multi-Platinum albums. Currently, Streisand appears at #7 on the RIAA list of Top Selling Artists, with over 70 million albums sold, right behind Billy Joel and Pink Floyd. She is currently #1 in all-time sales among female artists.
Streisand has recorded 35 studio albums, almost all with the Columbia Records label. Her early works in the 1960s (her debut, The Second Barbra Streisand Album, The Third Album, My Name Is Barbra, etc.) are considered classic renditions of theater and cabaret standards, including her slow version of the normally uptempo Happy Days Are Here Again. She performed this in a duet on The Judy Garland Show. Garland referred to her on the air as one of the last great belters. They also sang There's No Business Like Show Business with Ethel Merman joining them.
Beginning with My Name Is Barbra, her early albums were often medley-filled keepsakes of her television specials. Starting in 1969, she began attempting more contemporary material, but like many talented singers of the day, she found herself out of her element with rock. Her vocal talents prevailed, and she gained newfound success with the pop and ballad-oriented Richard Perry-produced album Stoney End in 1971. The title track, written by Laura Nyro, was a major hit for Streisand.
During the 1970s, she was also highly prominent on the pop charts, with Top 10 recordings such as The Way We Were (US No. 1), Evergreen (US No. 1), No More Tears (Enough Is Enough) (1979, with Donna Summer) (US No. 1), You Don't Bring Me Flowers (with Neil Diamond) (US No. 1) and The Main Event (US No. 3), some of which came from soundtrack recordings of her films.
As the 1970s ended, Streisand was named the most successful female singer in the U.S.?only Elvis Presley and The Beatles had sold more albums. In 1980, she released her best-selling effort to date, the Barry Gibb-produced Guilty. The album contained the hits Woman In Love (which spent several weeks atop the pop charts in the Fall of 1980), Guilty, and What Kind of Fool.
After years of largely ignoring Broadway and traditional pop music in favor of more contemporary material, Streisand returned to her musical-theater roots with 1985's The Broadway Album, which was unexpectedly successful, holding the coveted #1 Billboard position for three straight weeks, and being certified quadruple Platinum. The album featured tunes by Rodgers & Hammerstein, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Stephen Sondheim, who was persuaded to rework some of his songs especially for this recording. The Broadway Album was met with acclaim, including a nomination for Album of the Year and, ultimately, handed Streisand her eighth Grammy as Best Female Vocalist. After releasing the live album One Voice in 1986, Streisand was set to take another musical journey along the Great White Way in 1988. She recorded several cuts for the album under the direction of Rupert Holmes, including On My Own (from Les Mis?rables), a medley of How Are Things in Glocca Morra? and Heather on the Hill (from Finian's Rainbow and Brigadoon, respectively), All I Ask of You (from Phantom of the Opera), Warm All Over (from The Most Happy Fella) and an unusual solo version of Make Our Garden Grow (from Candide). Streisand was not happy with the direction of the project and it was ultimately scrapped. Only Warm All Over and a reworked, Lite FM-friendly version of All I Ask of You were ever released?the latter appearing on Streisand's 1988 effort, Till I Loved You.
At the beginning of the 1990s, Streisand started focusing on her directorial efforts and became almost inactive in the recording studio. In 1991, a four-disc box set, Just for the Record, was released. A compilation spanning Streisand's entire career to date, it featured over 70 tracks of live performances, greatest hits, rarities and previously unreleased material.
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