Sarah Brightman Photos

More from Sarah Brightman

Time to Say Goodbye	Diva: The Singles Collection	Eden
Diva: The Video Collection	Harem	La Luna (Live in Concert)

The first track "La Lune" brings the hair up on my neck just by listening to the keyboard intro. The 2nd track, "Winter in july", is one of Sarah's "pop married to classic" tracks. The lyrics are heartfelt & reflect her feelings about life. "Scarborough fair" is light and dreamy and "A whiter shade of pale" is operatic and revisited "a la Sarah". Beethoven's "Figlio Perduto" is my 2nd fav. track, I love how Sarah rearranged it to fit her voice. "How Fair this place" is pretty, but too short. The tracks continue into one another, like a multi-mood story of music. I find that tracks like "Here with me" and "Hijo De La Luna" are different tunes all together because "Hijo De La Luna" has a ballroom sound to it, with Spanish lyrics. It is sung a la Kate Bush. "Here with me" is more rock or "Dive-ish". "Gloomy Sunday" tones down the pace resulting in a bluesey, rainy-day track. Keeping with the moon theme, the title track "La Luna", is absolutely amazing. Sarah builds suspense in every breath of this track. Her voice soars as the song reaches its climax, wowing me every time. Unfortunately, the orchestra slightly drowns Sarah out at the end. The disc also features a hidden track. It is a breathy, up close & personal version of "Moon River". Sarah knows how to catch the attention of her fans.

The photos in "La Luna" are breath-taking, right down to the album cover.I dig the space-age lettering of her name on the cover. In comparison, Eden took on a heavier classical flavour, as so with "Time to say good-bye". Nevertheless, "La Luna" balances Sarah's career between "Dive" back in '93 to the present. Don't consider her slowing down even though the thought of a greatest hits double set sounds quite interesting.

I've had the golden opportunity to see Sarah in Montreal at the Molson Center on september 18 for her "La Luna" tour. Describe it, you say, Well, I have one word......EXTRAORDINARY! To hear her is one thing, but to see this woman perform was simply amazing. Definitely worth the money! Sing on Sarah! Hers is definitely one of the glorious voices.


Classic Sarah   September 4, 2000
Chad Rockwell (San Francisco, CA USA)
44 out of 49 found this review helpful

If you already love Sarah and her gorgeous voice, this CD will not disappoint you one bit. If you're not already a fan, she may win you over here. There are the usual classical pieces on which SB can more than hold her own. But the ethereal, sultry, and passionate pop/vocal tracks are where she shines on this CD. "Here With Me" rings of longing and passion (and stands out as my favorite), "He Doesn't See Me" has a bittersweet, dreamy quality, and "Gloomy Sunday" has a blues-y, downtrodden feel, befitting the sad lyrics. I'm glad Sarah steered clear of the cheesy, sentimental garbage that often marred her past pop albums (e.g., Eden's "Dust in the Wind," or "Johnny Wanna Live" on Dive). This is a top-notch effort that only gets better with each listening. And once again Sarah has melded seemingly disparate musical genres into a cohesive album that sticks to one theme: in this case, La Luna. My only quibble is in the covers of "Whiter Shade of Pale" and "Scarborough Fair" -- these classics don't seem appropriate to Sarah's voice, and vice versa.


Return to Eden with a little more Theme Thrown In   August 30, 2000
Brett D. Cullum (Houston, TX United States)
19 out of 19 found this review helpful

Sarah Brightman's newest CD offers more of the same ecclectic approach to combining opera and pop music side by side with electronic music as well as orchestras. The result is haunting and deeply personal. LA LUNA is not a departure for Sarah, but rather a continuation of the style she honed by the time EDEN was released. Prior to that album she had TIME TO SAY GOODBYE (a largely classical album save the cover of Queen's "Who Wants to Live Forever) and DIVE (almost entirely quirky pop). EDEN marked the first album to combine the two genres -- she did classical pieces, covers done classically, and pop tunes sung in the same style with choirs and various instruments. LA LUNA finds Sarah doing everything from Handel and Beethoven, even the folk song "Scarborough Fair", and a cover of "Here With Me" which was written and performed by DIDO on her 1999 release. So Sarah covers several centuries, and makes it sound seamless. Is it better than EDEN? Yes and no. Yes, the material is much more even (EDEN went from "Dust in the Wind" into a classical aria). Here the elements transition smoothely. But EDEN was a rare blend of the dramatic, and LA LUNA does not always offer you the highs and lows of that previous release. But it's a solid piece of work. If you are a fan...you'll love this. If you're new to Sarah...it's a great album. So all in all...it's a spell worth casting! Stand out track for me is "He Doesn't See Me", but from all I've seen everybody will pick their personal favorite.


The Moon Is High. . .   June 11, 2001
Clarissa (Ontario, California)
27 out of 29 found this review helpful

I love the intro and how it blends so perfectly into the trip-hoppy Winter In July, which happens to be my favorite song, beside La Luna of course. Her voice is so angelic and sweet that you can't help but invision an angel as you listen. This is truly a beautiful work of art. By having a strange fascination with the moon I was shocked to see the subject being that. It only heightened my anticipation as I waited impatiently for this incredible cd to come out. I bought it the day it was released and have been enthralled ever since. My first introduction to Sarah was by Eden, and just as I thought that there was no way that she could possibly conquer something better than that, what do you know, she does! (At least in my opinion.)

She's working with one of the greatest producers, Frank Peterson, (former member of Enigma), and with the ongoing process of reinventing herself you can't help but love her style of music, no matter what that style might be. One second she's singing New Age (Scarborough Fair), the next a soft, tranquil tune (He Doesn't See Me), surprising you with jazz (Gloomy Sunday), and then warming your heart with more highpitched ballads such as Figlio Perduto, How Fair This Place, and La Luna. This cd is definitely not as operatic as Eden and Time To Say Goodbye, but it moreso ventures onto the pop criteria, in a mellow sort of way.

Trust me. Once you own La Luna you'll soon be thanking me. (Hopefully!)

I hope this review helped. Did it?


La Lune porte les voiles de l'eternite   February 23, 2001
Richard Thomas (Georgia, USA)
17 out of 17 found this review helpful

I read a review the other day (on another site) that implied that it wasn't considered cool to like Sarah Brightman's work. Writing a good review of a Brightman album, the reviewer said, would be viewed by many as being "akin to drinking wine out of a box."

Well, I don't drink wine out of a box (although it would be OK to do so if that's the wine you liked; that's the "cool" attitude about wine these days). But cool or not, I do love Sarah Brightman -- pretty much everything about her, in fact. I love her voice and the stylistic range that allows her to communicate childlike innocence on one song, confident sensuality on another, and diva-like sophistication on still another. I love her approach to a concept album, such as "La Luna," in which the concept -- a moon that unifies humanity and offers a constant in our lives -- is woven loosely through the album, not forced, to allow listeners to define it themselves to a certain degree. I love her willingness to take risks in song selection and placement. Who would have thought that bracketing a Beethoven adaptation with a 60s classic ("Scarborough Fair") and a 70s anthem ("Whiter Shade of Pale") would work? But it did. In fact, "Scarborough Fair" and "Whiter Shade of Pale" have never been sung more beautifully, and the adaptation of Beethoven's music, "Figlio Perduto," is stunning at every level, arguably the best piece on the album.

Now, beware of a potential spoiler that follows, and stop reading here if you don't want to know about the surprise extra cut at the end of the album. It really was a surprise to me, it was wonderfully appropriate to the album's theme, and Brightman could not have presented it better. The song is "Moon River" (Mancini & Mercer), and, while shortened to a couple of verses, it was just right in that spot. It's one of the things I will remember most about "La Luna."

But there is one more thing I discovered and haven't seen mentioned anywhere. I'm not going to spoil this one. Just listen very carefully to the instrumental close of "Moon River" and you will hear a few chords of yet another "moon song," a real classic which requires only a couple of chords to be recognized. Nice touch.

And a very nice album by a gifted woman with a voice of incredible beauty. Now, if my opinion makes me "un-cool," so be it. I love music way too much to run singers or albums through a "cool index" before deciding whether it's OK to like them or not. Besides, from my experience in reading music critics' ideas about what's "cool," too much good material would fail the test and too much garbage would find its way into my CD changer.