"Solitaire" is a ballad written by Neil Sedaka and Phil Cody. Cody employs playing the card game of solitaire as a metaphor for a man "who lost his love through his indifference"—"while life goes on around him everywhere he's playing solitaire". The song is perhaps best known via its rendition by Carpenters. Another version by Andy Williams reached number 4 in the UK Singles Chart in 1973.
Solitaire is a 1972 album by American singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka.
Moon River: The Very Best of Andy Williams is a compilation album by American pop singer Andy Williams that was released on October 13, 2009. A note from Williams inside the CD booklet explains that the album "was put together to coincide with my memoir Moon River and Me, published by Viking/Penguin. It includes many of the songs that you made hits. I truly appreciate that, and I hope you enjoy the songs we selected for this CD." The collection covers a wide assortment of his material, including crossover hits, stabs at the youth market, a pair of Mancini-Mercer Oscar winners, a Christmas classic, and a eulogy to Robert F. Kennedy.
Born Free is the twentieth studio album by American pop singer Andy Williams and was released on April 10, 1967, by Columbia Records and includes half a dozen songs associated with movies or musicals. Two of these tracks, however, originated in the scores of the films indicated on the album jacket but had lyrics added later: the melody for "Strangers in the Night" was written for A Man Could Get Killed, and "Somewhere My Love" began as "Lara's Theme" from Doctor Zhivago.
Love, Andy is the twenty-first studio album by American pop singer Andy Williams, released on October 16, 1967, by Columbia Records to coincide with the NBC special of the same name, which aired on November 6. The LP had a mix of covers of old and recent hits that included two songs from the 1940s that also had chart success in 1966 via Chris Montez: "The More I See You" and "There Will Never Be Another You".
Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head is the twenty-fifth studio album by American pop singer Andy Williams and was released in the spring of 1970 by Columbia Records. Williams was less focused on covering recent hits on this project and instead selected several songs from the singer-songwriter genre. The concept for the album came from Mason Williams, who contacted producer Dick Glasser about co-producing an album that would give Williams's fans a medley of songs that did more than just highlight the most familiar parts of popular songs but rather focus on a unifying theme or storyline of songs that were not necessarily hit records. Billboard magazine opined that the album "may well be titled 'A Journey Through Life.' Through carefully selected songs it conveys a message of dreams, hopes, reality, frustrations and ultimate truth."
Love Theme from "Romeo and Juliet" is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on July 30, 1969, by Columbia Records. Of its 11 tracks, eight had been hits for other performers earlier that year, and one of the remaining three, "I'll Never Fall in Love Again", would become a huge success for Dionne Warwick several months later.
Love Story is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on February 10, 1971, by Columbia Records and included a recent Oscar nominee, a flashback to 1967 ("Traces"), a new song by Bacharach & David, a lesser-known one by Goffin & King, and two songs that originated in film scores from 1970 and had lyrics added later: the album closer, "Loss of Love", from Sunflower and the album opener from Love Story, which was subtitled "Where Do I Begin". The norm for Mathis projects from this era was to cover recent hits, and the title track of this one was so recent that the version by Andy Williams began a 13-week run to number nine on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart in February 1971, coinciding with the release of this LP.
Alone Again (Naturally) is the thirtieth studio album by American pop singer Andy Williams, released in September 1972 by Columbia Records and mainly consisting of songs originated by other artists. For its release in the UK, the album was titled The First Time Ever (I Saw Your Face), and three of the songs were replaced with the 7-inch single tracks "Who Was It?" and "Marmalade, Molasses & Honey" and a recording that was not released on vinyl in the U.S., "If You're Gonna Break Another Heart".
Solitaire is the thirty-first studio album by American pop singer Andy Williams, released in the fall of 1973 by Columbia Records and was an attempt to move away from his formulaic series of recent releases that relied heavily on songs that other artists had made popular.
The Way We Were is the thirty-second studio album by American pop singer Andy Williams, released in the spring of 1974 by Columbia Records and was a return to singing songs that his audience was already familiar with after Solitaire, his previous LP that was less reliant on covers of recent pop hits, did not perform well.
You Lay So Easy on My Mind is the thirty-fourth studio album by American pop singer Andy Williams, released in November 1974 by Columbia Records. The idea for this LP was mentioned in an interview with Williams in the November 3, 1973, issue of Billboard magazine that emphasized his desire to move away from recording albums of Easy Listening covers of hits by other artists, noting that he was "planning an album to be cut in Nashville with Columbia's high-flying country-pop producer, Billy Sherrill." The article coincided with the release of his first attempt to shift directions, Solitaire, which performed poorly. A return to the Easy Listening hits formula, The Way We Were, followed in the spring of 1974 but failed to even chart, so this next attempt to eschew soft rock songs leaned heavily on Country hits.
Andy is the thirty-sixth studio album by American pop singer Andy Williams, released in the fall of 1976 by Columbia Records. Williams is not as focused on covering pop hits and standards on this album and instead relies mainly on original or lesser-known songs. In the liner notes for the album's 2002 CD release, writer Richard M. Erickson explains that the album "was recorded at six different studios to accommodate Andy's touring schedule. One recording session was at a portable studio set up at a Marriott hotel."
The Andy Williams Sound of Music is a double compilation album by American pop singer Andy Williams that was released early in 1969 by Columbia Records. Although seven of the 21 tracks date back to his years with Cadence Records, where he racked up a half a dozen top 10 pop hits, the selections here are more in the vein of Standards or Easy Listening fare, as exemplified by the two charting singles included -- "On the Street Where You Live" and "Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars (Corcovado)".
Reflections is a compilation album by American pop singer Andy Williams that was released in the UK on December 30, 1977, by the CBS Records division of Columbia. The subtitle on the cover reads, "A collection of 20 of my favorite songs", and a statement from Williams in the liner notes says, "Songs have very special memories for all of us. They pinpoint moments in our time. On this album I have chosen 20 songs that do just that. I hope you like them." While there was one new song ("Sad"), the collection was otherwise a balanced mix of album cuts and chart hits from his years with Columbia Records, including the seven top 10 UK singles he'd had during this period.
The Very Best of Andy Williams is a compilation album by American pop singer Andy Williams that was released in the UK on October 5, 2009. A note from Williams inside the CD booklet explains that the album "was put together to coincide with my memoir Moon River and Me, published by Orion Press. It includes many of the songs that you made hits. I truly appreciate that, and I hope you enjoy the songs we selected for this CD." This compilation includes recordings that either charted in the UK but not in the US or charted much higher on the UK singles chart than they did on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US. It entered the UK albums chart on October 17, 2009, and reached number 10 during its six weeks there.
I Don't Remember Ever Growing Up is the forty-third and final studio album by American pop singer Andy Williams, released in the UK by the Demon Music Group in 2007. In the liner notes of the album Williams writes, "Over the past few years I have come across songs that I really wanted to record. I picked 13 of my favorites and set out to make a new record." While the title track is the only new song, the other 12 selections were chart hits for other artists or, as is the case with "Desperado" by the Eagles, received critical acclaim without having been released as a single.
You've Got a Friend is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on August 11, 1971, by Columbia Records. The phrase "Today's Great Hits" can be found above the title on both sides of the record jacket as well as both sides of the LP label as if to emphasize that this is essentially an album covering songs that were recently on the charts. This was a common practice of many vocalists of the period, so much so in fact that fellow Columbia artist Andy Williams also released an album titled You've Got a Friend in August 1971 on which he coincidentally covers seven of the 11 tracks that Mathis recorded for this album.
Feelings is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on October 20, 1975, by Columbia Records and strayed slightly from the singer's usual practice of covering hits by other artists by including two new songs, both written by Jerry Fuller: "Hurry Mother Nature" and "That's All She Wrote", which Ray Price took to number 34 on the Country chart the following spring.
I Only Have Eyes for You is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on May 10, 1976, by Columbia Records and included two new songs, "Yellow Roses on Her Gown" and "Ooh What We Do", which was written specifically for him, as well as a contemporary arrangement of the 1934 title track that foreshadowed his recordings of standards that incorporated a disco beat a few years later.
