I was listening to Natalie Cole earlier today [[easily in the top 10 of my fav female vocalists, highly likely she's in my top 5). Her Take A Look album got me to thinking. Diana Ross as a Supreme was popular with audiences as she sang showtunes and standards. And of course with the success of her taking on Billie Holiday recordings in the 70s, she continued to wow audiences with her renditions of jazz and blues numbers. Seems like with the arrival of the 80s she almost completely ditched this part of her artistry in favor of crap like "Pieces of Ice". [[I know, I know...I should give it a rest about "Pieces of Ice" but I just can't help thinking that it's at the very least in the running for #1 WTF Was She Thinking moment in her career. But I digress...)

I believe it's been mentioned that she did toy with the idea of recording an album of standards in the mid 80s and even managed to complete a couple of cuts before abandoning the project and focusing on "Pieces Of Ice" [[last one, I swear it). While I'm betting that if and when these cuts see the light of day they will probably contain brilliant vocals, I do think it was a good idea to move away from this idea at that time. There was still some hit making gas in the tank in the mid 80s if Diana had only put the peddle to the metal instead of slipping on pieces of...nope, not gonna go there.

My question is, does anyone think in the 90s that Diana should've gone in the same direction as Natalie Cole did, with the jazzy, mellow mood albums? The first few ones in the 90s that Natalie released were major successes for her. I've always felt that Natalie was a similar type vocalist to Diana in the sense that Natalie seems at home in just about any genre she tackles. Diana did do the Stolen Moments live album, which didn't take the music world by storm, but as great as those performances were, everyone had already heard her do those songs, so what was incentive for running out and getting it? I wonder if maybe Diana had gone for a more mellow direction with her musical output if she would have had greater success in the 90s than she did with the stuff she put out.