Track Listing

1. I've Got to Use My Imagination
2. Ain't No Sunshine
3. Midnight Train to Georgia
4. Baby Is a Butterfly
5. Breakfast in Bed
6. Cream Dream
7. Natural High
8. Heart of Stone
9. Sara Smile
10. Eliminate the Night
11. Break Up to Make Up
12. I Know What's Goin' On
13. Alone with You
14. Kiss and Say Goodbye
15. Heat Wave [From Standing in the Shadows of Motown]
16. What Becomes of the Brokenhearted [From Standing in the Shadows of Moto

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2935 in Music
• Released on: 2007-05-22
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
Joan Osbourne's recently recorded album pays homage to the great Soul and R&B songs of the late '60s and early '70s. The album features a unique combination of unforgettable interpretations of timeless R&B classics. Her first single to radio will be "I've Got to Use My Imagination."

Amazon.com
On Breakfast in Bed, her first release on Time Life Records (yes, that Time Life) Joan Osborne tackles a crop of hand-picked soul and R&B favorites with equal parts sass and sensitivity. Long an underappreciated artist, Osborne is a performer with the wisdom to exercise vocal restraint for an effect that's more Dusty Springfield than Christina Aguilera. Her fine previous outing interpreting soul standards was aptly titled How Sweet It Is, and witness her contribution to the terrific 2002 film Standing in the Shadows of Motown, where Osborne's astute readings of "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" and "Heatwave" outshone performers like Ben Harper and Gerald Levert (happily, both songs are included here). The title track and Hall and Oates' "Sara Smile" are both canny choices that play to her strengths in delivering credible blue-eyed soul, and six new Osborne-penned songs fit neatly into the record. If her compositions pale a bit next to the classics she covers (with the sultry and slithery exception of the excellent "Eliminate the Night"), give Osborne credit for bravely placing herself side-by-side with songwriting luminaries like Holland-Dozier-Holland and Bill Withers. Breakfast in Bed makes for a leisurely listen on a sunny Sunday morning, so put up your feet and stay awhile. --Ben Heege

Customer Reviews

Some nice tries, some misses, overall a bit monotonous
What to make of this? Joan Osborne, 6 years after her last non-compilation, major-label recording, returns to the same well plumbed by "How Sweet It Is", namely a batch of old soul/R&B hits, although this time interspersed with a few originals written in the same vein. The older album boasted an absolutely startling re-imagination of the title track, which was worth the price of the disc all by itself. But that album was otherwise populated by comparatively unimaginative, by-the-numbers remakes, notable only in that they served to remind me of what made the originals so memorable in the first place.

The unfortunate thing about "Breakfast in Bed" is that there is no single track as mesmerizing as "How Sweet It Is". Some of the remakes -- notably, "Kiss and Say Goodbye" and "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" -- are enjoyable, if nothing to make you forget the original recordings. But the disc as a whole is sunk by a relentless sameness of tempo, of timbre, of instrumentation and style, that ultimately becomes boring, which is something of a feat considering how good the songs themselves actually are. Joan Osborne's voice is potentially a wonderful instrument, but she really doesn't break much of a sweat on these covers, nor on the originals, and the result, while pleasant enough, isn't anything to hold my attention.

I have in my mp3 collection a recording of Joan Osborne and a skeletal band covering "Brick House" in the studio of some radio station, and it's a revelation, funky and soulful and fun in equal measures. And for God's sake, go to whatever vendor you like and download her rendition of "How Sweet It Is" from the album of the same name; it completely transforms the song from a joyous declaration of love, sweet love, into something altogether more desperate. While it might not be to all tastes, it serves as the lone, legally downloadable demonstration that Joan Osborne is a formidable artist, capable of taking well-worn R&B favorites and making them her own. Nothing on this disc serves in the same way.

Osborne Hits It Dead On The Mark!
I'm a long time fan and have always thought that Joan was just waiting to knock it out of the park, but hadn't found the right material. A great voice waiting for a record that would make people recognize that her talent was far greater than "What if God..." - Now, finally she found it.

Breakfast in Bed brings together some of the great soul songs of all time and serves them up on a hot bed of Joan Osborne's searing vocals. My favorites are the two Gladys Knight covers. She meets the challenge without missing a beat...and the energy with which she tears through Imagination - a song so worth reviving - is nothing short of incredible.

Other great tracks are Kiss and Say Goodbye and Ain't No Sunshine...both treasured favorites of mine. I felt like the songlist on this CD was ambitious undertaking, but Joan Osborne hit every track with passion and grit and real 'bed appeal'.

Hands down the best album of her career.

You can't go wrong.
This intriguing mix cover songs and originals make this a very enjoyable collection, although the covers are not as varied as say Annie Lennox's Medusa but still engaging all the same. The tracks seem to pull you in more and more with each listen. "Baby is a Butterfly", "Sarah Smile" and "Cream Dream" were all particularly absorbing the first time through. The production is very good and clean. Her voice is as mesmerizing and sensual as always. You can't go wrong.