You are hosting a dinner party for your boss and coworkers. Your family is smiling and dressed to the nines, even the baby. The caterer has arranged the most succulent appetizers on your special-events plates. You open a bottle of wine, poured some on a decanter and let it air until the guests arrive. Everything looks good but you suddenly realize that you are missing one thing: good music. Panicked, the whole family looks for an appropriate album but the guests have arrived. The dinner party turns out bland, all your hard work gone – all because you are lacking good music.
According to a Forbes article, socializing with coworkers is essential for career advancement. One part of socializing is hosting dinner parties for one’s superior and peers. While conversation is more personal and lighter, don’t be fooled…you are being evaluated, so it is very important to create a good impression through every little detail, from your menu to the cleanliness of your place to the music you play.
Music sets the mood for your dinner party, so you must find an album everyone can enjoy. You need something uplifting, yet not too brash that it takes attention away from the conversation pieces you have planned for the evening. You need something with high quality audio and deep instrumental background. Such a great combination is nearly impossible to find, but you can find all of these qualities in reimagined jazz album Cheek to Cheek.
Cheek to Cheek is a collaboration between pop music icon Lady Gaga and 19-time Grammy Award Winner Tony Bennett. The album includes the works of some of the world’s greatest jazz composers, including Billy Strayhorn, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin. Gaga’s and Bennett’s award-winning voices, combined with a 49-member orchestra, produced songs that are enjoyable, high-quality and timeless, perfect to accompany any dinner party. Public reaction reflects the album’s excellent qualities…it won the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album and ranked No. 1 on Billboard’s US Top Jazz Albums for two consecutive years.
The album combines the original songs’ classic forms with modern audio quality. The subject matter is suitable for people of all ages, lacks the profanities prevalent in today’s mainstream music and is generally lighthearted. One of the lead songs in the album, Anything Goes, is a perfect example. Written and composed by Cole Porter in the 1934, it withstood the test of time and remains one of the most famous jazz songs in the world. While it originally discusses the scandals of the Great Depression-era high society, the Gaga-Bennett version is lighthearted; it talks about how times have changed and anything goes today (sung with a hint of nostalgia in Bennet’s part, sarcasm in Gaga’s).
Before you next dinner party, make sure to purchase Cheek to Cheek, available on iTunes, online or in select stores across the United States. Don’t let that last-minute panic as you look for the perfect music be the norm…with Cheek to Cheek, here is how your dinner party will go down: Your boss and coworkers arrive, greet your family and marvel over the tidiness of the place. The soft tune of Anything Goes plays in the background as the night goes on, keeping the atmosphere light and lively. At the end of the night, you bid your guests good night, close the doors and clear the tables. When you turn off the music, you realize how successful your dinner party was and make sure that you have the album ready when the next one comes.
