Blue Skies

Irving Berlin's song gets an interpretation from Fitzgerald that leans into comfort without ever becoming saccharine — a distinction that requires both taste and technique in equal measure. Her voice settles into the melody as though she's known it her entire life, which by this point she essentially had. The arrangement is bright without being brittle, the brass section contributing warmth rather than punch, the rhythm section swinging gently underneath. What Fitzgerald does with the tempo is subtle: she breathes with the phrase rather than around it, creating the sensation that the song is in no hurry, that the blue skies it describes are genuinely on offer and won't be rushing away. Her tone in the middle register here is particularly beautiful — the quality that musicians sometimes describe as "center," a complete occupation of the note rather than an approach to it. The cultural function this recording serves is the reinvigoration of the American songbook, the demonstration that these songs from the twenties and thirties contained inexhaustible depth. This is Fitzgerald as interpreter in the fullest sense: not covering a song but revealing what was always inside it, making you wonder why you never quite heard it this way before. This is driving music, Sunday-morning music, cooking-in-a-warm-kitchen music — deeply benign in the best possible way.