Never Too Much, a movie about Luther Vandross’s life, is now on release. It is a sensitive portrait of an exquisite talent that gets close to the man but does not break any confidences he kept to himself. To mark the release, his record label will put out a new greatest hits album in December, with some new material included. Most notably, there is a cover of The Beatles’ “Michelle.”
Nearly 20 years after Vandross’ passing, anything new to the world is unlikely to be the finished article. There have been many other releases and box sets to capture his output. The track, nevertheless, is a beautiful piece of work, like a sketch that a great artist would use as part of the creative process towards developing a masterpiece. Even though the final work is denied to us, we can use our imagination to see how great it would have been
Vandross’ musical presentation is sophisticated, and the song’s development is slow and studied. His glorious tenor may, at this stage of development, be bathed in a less lush—or less authentically lush (there appears to be much use of electronic sounds standing in for orchestral arrangements)—settings, but the pieces of a glorious jigsaw are all in place. We even get the chance to hear Vandross doing his own backing vocals, a field in which he excelled, but did not indulge much in his superstar years. The work is a touching reminder of what we lost.
