Frank Sinatra’s “Some Nice Things I’ve Missed” Reviewed
Frank Sinatra’s 53rd album, Some Nice Things I’ve Missed, from July 1974, is not the disaster a one star review in Mojo and two stars in AllMusic would suggest. At the very least there is always Sinatra’s voice. And if “Sweet Caroline” and “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” are as advertised, both of Floyd Huddleston’s songs are first rate.
You don’t know Floyd? I think you do. He co-wrote “Ev’rybody Wants to Be a Cat” (a rinky-tinky-tinky) and once you know that “I’m Gonna Make It All The Way” is more assuredly a form of Glen Campbell-y gently on my mind; that opening is becoming a standard after making appearances every where from 1968’s “Everybody’s Talkin” to (er, 2022’s) “Goodbye Mr. Blue” skillsets and Frank handles it with kid gloves, he floats right through and it is more than sunshine song, it is what happens after you’ve had one for your baby with a kiss off “it’s going really well, now, you can go to hell, now” that’s been decades in coming: it is a lost great one indeed. The other Floyd track “Satisfy Me One More Time” isn’t as clever but it is the only song here that gets the swing it deserves and Don Costa’s best moment.
More goodies, “Summer Of ’42” was a huge movie in my teen years, Jennifer O’Neil just completely gorgeous and the story tinged with a sweet melancholia and nostalgia, Michel Legrand’s soundtrack instrumental, a big hit Alan and Marilyn Bergman wrote a lovely lyric for “The Summer Knows” (they would do a similar trick for the less successful though not disastrous “What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life”) and everyone from Barbra Streisand to Oscar Peterson has covered it. Sinatra isn’t any more than pretty good, but he isn’t any less either. “Tie A Yellow Ribbon ‘Round The Ole Oak Tree” is credible, and so that makes five pretty good songs on his 53rd album -not a bad batting average.
The problem is that what doesn’t work is truly disappointing, “If” has always been David Gates well beyond Middle Of The Road material and Stevie Wonder deserved better than a rote “You Are The Sunshine Of My Life”, two of the worst here.
No, Some Nice Things I’ve Missed is not Songs For Swinging Lovers (here), it isn’t even The World We Knew (which at least included “Something Stupid”) (here) but it isn’t Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back (here)either. What it is is a central located old school pop album.
Grade: B
