Bette Midler

Bette Midler may be best known for her soul-swelling, chart-smashing, era-defining ballad "Wind Beneath My Wings," but long before she became a musical matter of course at weddings and finer karaoke palaces, Bette was raising a ruckus with smart-and-sassy numbers like a solo take on the Andrews Sisters' vocal-trio extravaganza "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," and a tongue-tripping traipse through the big-band standard "In the Mood." It's no lie — Bette can do a mood, whether she's looking back on old times with an intimate "In My Life," or swinging through the Latin-pop ladies' shout-out "In These Shoes."

Soar into Next Steps for more of Bette's best.

Bette Midler's voice is a special thing — clear, bright, and supple, it can stretch out to glorious sonic heights one minute, then settle down to a quiet yet no less potent murmur the next. The fact that such pipes are wielded by a woman with an actor's ability to breathe life into just about any lyric makes for one powerful songbird, whether she's giving her all to a surprisingly moving, disco-drenched version of "Strangers In the Night," recalling the girl-group days atop a wall of sound on "Paradise," or even packing an emotional country punch on "I Know This Town."

Dive into the Bette Midler vault in Deep Cuts.

Check out the bawdy stand-up stylings of "Why Bother?" "Otto Titsling," and "Soph"; sample the lush and loung-y love song "P.S. I Love You"; or catch the mother of all stage-mom show tunes, "Everything's Coming Up Roses," from Bette's television tour de force in [i]Gypsy[/i]. One thing is abundantly clear: [i]the woman's got range[/i]. You wanna talk Deep Cuts? She's done 'em and we've got 'em — everything from the smoky cabaret of "Is That All There Is?" with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra to the twice-as-nice tribute to Rosemary Clooney, "Sisters," belted out side by side with Linda Rondstadt.

In a way, Bette Midler is a woman out of time, a modern-day version of the old-school musical star who could break into song in the middle of a scene and make it look as natural as breathing. That's because even before the Divine Miss M hit it big in the movies — scoring Oscar® nods and monster theme songs like "The Rose" — she was all about emoting. Sure, her voice can swing from a wail to a whisper at the drop of a note, but the woman [i]feels[/i] her tunes, which means that she can transform a breezy pop novelty, like "Yellow Beach Umbrella," into something delightfully moving, then turn around to deliver her heart-stopping, non-denominational hymn to human harmony, "From a Distance." From her unofficial theme song, "Friends," to the crazy Christmas tune "Cool Yule," our [i]Bette Midler[/i] Essentials brings you the best of a real-deal superstar.