Tony Bennett - I Wanna Be Around (2015) [Hi-Res]

As the studio album followup to Tony Bennett's breakthrough record, I Left My Heart in San Francisco, I Wanna Be Around had a lot to live up to, but since San Francisco was a culmination of Bennett's development, and not a fluke, I Wanna Be Around turned out to be almost on a par with its predecessor. "The Good Life" and "I Wanna Be Around" became Top 20 hits, showing that Bennett had somehow found a line into good new pop material, and there were also some excellent arrangements, courtesy of Marty Manning, including a percussion-and-flute reading of "Let's Face the Music and Dance" that echoed the Beat of My Heart album and a nod to the South American trend with Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Quiet Nights (Corcovado)." A worthy successor. -- William Ruhlmann