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Associated Press

Barbra Streisand was worried.
She had just spent six days a week for six weeks recording the audiobook version of her 2023 memoir My Name is Barbra, which became more than 48 hours of discussing her career – full of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards – and the life that came with it.
But now, it was time to record a new album with a stunning line-up of duet partners that ranged from current hitmakers Hozier and Sam Smith to legends Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and James Taylor. And when producers played the songs for her, she could not sing along. Her mighty voice would just squeak.
“My voice was shot,” says Streisand, 83, calling from her home in Malibu, California. “I mean, I literally prayed to God in front of that microphone, ‘Let my voice be there for me.’ And I don’t know how, but it was there.”
Fans will be able to hear that for themselves on her album The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume 2, available in stores and on streaming services. Streisand shows she can still deliver the performances she wants while coaxing them out of others.


Her duet with Dylan had been decades in the making. In 1970, Dylan sent Streisand a bouquet of flowers and a note – written in what she believes was crayon – asking, “Would you sing with me?”
They did not connect until decades later. When Streisand started work on her new album, she sent Dylan a copy of her memoir with an inscription referring to their time separately performing in Greenwich Village as teenagers and hoping it was time to finally sing together.
Choosing to rework the Ray Noble standard “The Very Thought of You” – popularised by everyone from Nat King Cole and Tony Bennett to Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald – turned out to be a surprise. It is not one of her personal favourites, although it is her long-time manager Marty Erlichman’s favourite song.
Dylan, one of the world’s most revered songwriters, only wanted to sing a standard, not one of his own classics. “Isn’t that great?” Streisand says. “I would’ve sung anything with him.”
She also agreed to his request to keep everyone else out of the studio when they recorded – including Streisand’s husband, James Brolin, who often goes to her sessions.
“I had heard [Dylan] wrote [his 1969 song] ‘Lay, Lady, Lay’ for me,” she says. “So I thought, ‘Let’s make this lush, romantic track.’”

Although Dylan has a reputation for not taking much direction from producers, Streisand says he was very receptive to her suggestions.
“He was totally open to ‘Why don’t you maybe try this?’ or ‘Phrase it this way’ or ‘Try something else’ – just like I do as a director in movies and he was my actor that day,” she says. “To capture his originality and his voice and his phrasing, it was just an exciting experience.”
Her experience with McCartney was more daunting. There was a full film crew on hand, led by Oscar-winning director Frank Marshall, to capture the recording of two of the world’s most successful artists for a documentary on Streisand’s life. Streisand said that it added to the challenges of the session.
“He was kind of shy about it and I understand him,” she says about recording “My Valentine” with McCartney. “I walked into a room of 25 people [to sing] and I don’t like that.”

McCartney told his website he was “terrified” during the three-hour session.
“I thought, ‘Well, this will be easy because it’s my song, it’s “My Valentine”. What can go wrong?’” he says. “But what I’d forgotten was that they’d arranged it so that it had to go in Barbra’s key and then in my key. So, to get from Barbra’s key into mine was kind of difficult … It wasn’t easy at all.”
They quickly worked it out. “It turned out great,” says Streisand, who released the song in May as one of the album’s preview singles.
Another single is resonating even more. “Letter to My 13-Year-Old Self”, Streisand’s duet with Icelandic singer-songwriter Laufey, hit No 1 on the iTunes chart earlier this month, topping Sabrina Carpenter’s “Manchild” and Mariah Carey’s “Type Dangerous” on release day.


Streisand related to the song because it reminded her of a middle-school report she wrote called “My Thirteen Years”, which meant so much to her that she still has it. In neat, cursive writing, she recalled what her life was like, her love of Shakespearean sonnets and the death of her father, Emanuel.
“I was too young to realise what had happened,” she writes in the report.
It was at age 13 that Streisand also made her first record, when her mother brought her to Nola Studios in Manhattan to record “You’ll Never Know” and “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart”.
“When I was 13, that’s a very distinguished year in my life,” Streisand says. “So I hear this song … and it really hit me.”
She worked with Laufey to turn the original, which Laufey sang solo, into a duet. They settled on Laufey singing as the 13-year-old and Streisand as her mother. Streisand says she was “absolutely thrilled” with how it turned out and how fans have responded to it.
Sure, duet success is nothing new to Streisand, who has topped the charts with Neil Diamond on “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”, and Donna Summer on “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)”, and a string of albums including Duets (2002), Partners (2014) and Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway (2016).

But The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume 2 is different. Streisand says her worries about the world and President Donald Trump’s second administration may have subconsciously contributed to her selection of some of the album’s more serious tracks – like Sting’s “Fragile”, and her reworking of “Love Will Survive” from 2024’s The Tattooist of Auschwitz TV series into a duet with Seal.
“I’d like to be happier,” Streisand says. “But every time I turn on the television – and I’m a glutton for punishment, obviously – I’m fascinated and horrified at the same time, you know?”
Streisand says that at a recent dinner with US Senator Cory Booker, he described the current state of Washington as “created chaos, corruption and cruelty”.
Streisand adds, “I thought, ‘That kind of sums him [Trump] up.’”
Streisand, who has retired from touring, does plan to work on achieving the goal she set out in her memoir: to enjoy life more. The Secret of Life – named from the James Taylor classic, as well as a book she reads to her grandchildren – has sparked thoughts about what enriches her life.
“The secret of life is spending time with people you love,” she says, adding she plans to release a string of photos of her and her “secrets”, including her husband, her son Jason Gould, and other friends, family and her dogs.
Streisand is in her “stop and smell the roses” era.
“I’m getting older by the day, by the minute, and you have to take a look at your life from that point of view again, you know?” Streisand says.
“I look in the mirror and go, ‘How much time do I have left?’ … I’ve had several projects I’ve never fulfilled, but I have such fulfilment now with people that I love.”


Barbra Streisand duets with Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Hozier and others on new album

Brazilian percussionist Ney Rosauro stuns music fans with glorious Hong Kong concert

Mission: Impossible composer Lalo Schifrin dead at 93

Lorde’s dramatic style evolution: the Royals singer went from gothic Vivienne Westwood looks to pretty Monique Lhuillier gowns – and opted for a gender-neutral look at this year’s Met Gala

Music

Barbra Streisand performs in New York on October 11, 2012. The US singer has released a new album of duets with stars from Bob Dylan to Paul McCartney and Laufey. Photo: AP

The cover of Barbra Streisand’s 2023 memoir My Name is Barbra. Photo: Viking

Paul McCartney said he was “terrified” during the recording with Streisand. Photo: AFP 

Streisand with her husband James Brolin in 2019. Photo: WireImage

Van Morrison talks about his new album, an excess of songs, and his Covid backlash

Irish singer Van Morrison performs at Pub in the Park 2024, in Marlow, England. Photo: Getty Images

The cover of Van Morrison’s new album. 

Van Morrison plays acoustic guitar at a recording session in March 1967 in New York. Photo: Getty Images

From Leslie Cheung to Nicholas Tse, Cantopop’s Canadian connections revealed in exhibition

An exhibition at Vancouver’s Chinese Canadian Museum 
examines how Cantopop stars like Leslie Cheung, Nicholas Tse, Faye Wong and Leon Lai, as well as other generations of Asian singers, continue to influence Chinese immigrants and their descendants in Canada through music and fashion. Photo: Will Luk

Melissa Karmen Lee, CEO of the Chinese Canadian Museum, at “Dream Factory: Cantopop Mandopop 1980s-2000”. Photo: Chinese Canadian Museum

Chinese-Canadian fashion designers have created pieces inspired by outfits worn by Cantopop and Mandopop legends. Photo: Will Luk

A piece by Stephanie Kong, inspired by the wedding dress worn by Anita Mui, on show at the Chinese Canadian Museum’s “Dream Factory” exhibition. Photo: Chinese Canadian Museum

“Dream Factory: Cantopop Mandopop 1980s-2000” can be viewed until May 31, 2026. Photo: Will Luk

How US star Barbara Walters opened the door for women in television

US TV veteran Barbara Walters at a book signing for her book “Audition: A Memoir”, in 2008, in Beverly Hills, California. Photo: TNS

Barbara Walters airs her interview with Monica Lewinsky (left) on March 3, 1999. Lewinsky had an affair with President Bill Clinton while working at the White House as an intern. Photo: TNS

Walters had an unhealthy obsession with colleague and rival Diane Sawyer (above). Photo: Shutterstock

1980s Hong Kong pop idol Danny Chan’s bittersweet success story: his talent, fame, the tabloid rumours, his retirement and early death

Singer Danny Chan Pak-keung puts one of his albums in a time capsule in 1991. Photo: SCMP

Danny Chan was one of Hong Hong’s “Three Kings and A Queen of Cantopop” in the 1980s, with fellow idols Leslie Cheung, Anita Mui and Alan Tam. Photo: SCMP

Yvonne Siu, project manager of TVB, presents a souvenir to Danny Chan in 1984. Photo: SCMP

Chan singing at his own birthday party in 1988. Photo: SCMP

Chan (left) and Jacky Cheung Hok-yau at the Top Ten Pop Stars Election in 1987. Photo: SCMP

There were numerous rumours about a relationship between Pansy Ho and Chan. Photo: Weibo

Chan performing at a concert to promote Aids awareness in 1990. Photo: SCMP

Chan was taken to Queen Mary Hospital after collapsing at home on May 19, 1992. Photo: SCMP

Flanked by singer Anita Mui Yim-fong and actor Chow Yun-fat, Danny Chan’s older brother Chan Pak-ling carries his younger brother’s picture at the singer’s funeral in 1993. Photo: SCMP

Lifestyle

Entertainment

Culture

For The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume 2, Barbra Streisand teamed with Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Hozier and Sam Smith and more


For The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume 2, Barbra Streisand teamed with Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Hozier and Sam Smith and more.


Paul McCartney

Will Smith

Donald Trump