What the title lacked in creativity, the album made up for in artistry.
While the first album had frequently hedged bets ("Much More"?), this one was eleven tracks of perfection from the start. Grabbing onto Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer's "Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home," Barbra tore it away from Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Sammy Davis Jr. and everyone else. Even to this day, to listen to this track is to feel you are hearing it the only way it could have been sung.
Meanwhile "Right As Rain" was rescued with a tender vocal that brings so much life to EY (Yip) Harburg and Harold Arlen's song you wonder why others didn't rush to grab this song and run with it. Harburg and Arlen's "Down With Love" is another immediate classic take. The yearning Barbra brings to the song, the way she breathes into the notes and rides them to new heights makes this one of her most confident takes ever. There's a yearning quality in most of the tracks and another reason for that is that the songs are arranged in higher keys than Barbra used on the first album (or on subsequent ones).
There's also so much confidence on this album which she began recording June 3, 1963. Why is that? Because the success of the first album proved her instincts right and there was no hesitation with this album.
The album sailed up the charts to number two -- without any hit single -- and remained there for three weeks. "Down With Love" is performed with the kind of gusto that still shows up 101 vocal gymnists who've failed to grasp that delivery is more than the notes hit.
