Music Review: Madeleine Peyroux, Keep Me In Your Heart For A While: The Best Of

By Noreen Sobczyk

When the first Madeleine Peyroux album was released, I was managing a corporate store and gave her non-offensive easy jazz debut a lot of play. I remember thinking, “she’s got a nice voice, even if it is Billie Holiday’s.” She had the chops, but lacked emotional conviction. Since it was her debut I thought perhaps she would find her own artistic voice on her sophomore release.

All these years and albums later it seems Peyroux still can’t find her own footing enough to interest me—even on an alleged “best of.” She just seems unconnected to her material. For example, she sings Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love” with a bizarre chipper tone. The Cohen original oozes longing, desire, and passion while Peyroux executes it like a lilting little ditty.

It’s also difficult (if not impossible) to match the inherently emotional “Keep Me In Your Heart For A While,” which singer/songwriter Warren Zevon recorded as a final goodbye while refusing treatment, having accepted his swiftly approaching fate from cancer. You have to have pretty big balls and a damn amazing version of the song in your arsenal to attempt to match Zevon’s sentiment (let alone name your album after the song), but the problem is that Peyroux doesn’t.

Her version and this album just left me bored, and in music, that is perhaps the worst offense. This album of covers sounds like a Billie Holiday impersonator self-indulgently showboating at a low-rent karaoke bar. And since I own multiple Billie Holiday albums, I found my mind wandering to which one I might be playing instead of this “best of” release.

Keep Me In Your Heart For A While was released on October 14 through Rounder Records.