You don't normally think stress when you think Barry Manilow, in fact you think just the opposite, but the mellow-voiced master had to be feeling a little when he hit the studio to record this, the latest installment in his decade-by-decade dissection of songs that still cause heart-skips. The '70s, after all, launched Manilow's star; "Mandy" and "Copacabana" might seem light years apart, but a single decade contained them. So it is that fans will pick up this set up with some serious expectations--Manilow, if anybody, should be teaching the master class on this music. That he does: Instead of trying to reinvent his own hits and those of others who managed to wring true feelings out of a decade dominated by disco, he embraces them as they were; leadoff track "The Way We Were" works on a lot of levels. "My Eyes Adored You" and the Carpenters' classic "(They Long to be) Close to You" hew close enough to Manilow's melancholy sensibility to seem authentically his, and so do most of the other selections--Lennon and McCartney's "The Long and Winding Road" is about as far from soft-favorites radio as it gets, which is to say not far at all. It takes 12 tracks to get to Manilow's own material (and 18 to arrive at the song that makes the whole world sing), but by the time you get there you realize you wouldn't have minded more waiting--where's the James Taylor cover? What about a Joni Mitchell? Here's hoping a set of '80s re-dos—look out, Toto and Bonnie Tyler--is not far behind. --Tammy La Gorce

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