Setting a New Standard

In the music industry, a “standard” is a popular song that almost everyone knows, a classic that has been recorded or sung by numerous performers who each put their own spin on it. In a previous era, they were often songs first composed for a Broadway show (think anything written by Cole Porter) that migrated to the pop charts thanks to someone like Frank Sinatra or Ella Fitzgerald, who’d give them a new uptempo or ballad treatment.

Few singers today sing the standards, those songs are perceived as too old. But Sunday night at Joe’s Pub in New York, the genre itself got a whole new interpretation.

Singer Billy Porter returned to that venue for the first time since his 2005 one-man show Ghetto Superstar with an inventive new program of music he called The Contemporary American Standard.

Selecting numbers by singers or songwriters better known to today’s audiences like Stevie Wonder, John Legend, Donny Hathaway, India Arie, Bonnie Raitt and James Taylor to name a few, Porter sang inspired neo-soul, rock, pop and hip hop arrangements of songs that collectively mined feelings of love, desire, loss and inner strength.

These were not mere note-for-note covers of other people’s songs, but rather reinventions, in Porter’s own gospel/soul/Broadway-stage-infused style. Faithful to the meaning of the “standard,” everyone knew these songs but marveled at the unique approaches. Porter brought the house to its feet with a slower, funkier take on Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” then later dropped a few original rap lyrics into a remix of the Beatles “Got to Get You Into My Life.”

In conceiving the whole show, Porter assessed the state of the recording industry and the ways in which consumer spending on music has changed. “People want comfort music,” he said, “Music they are already familiar with.” No one was releasing anything new, he noted, “Unless you’re Beyonce.”

Backed up most ably by a three piece band and assisted by his musical collaborators James Sampliner and Michael McElroy, Porter gave the capacity crowd more than its money’s worth. Scheduled for only one more evening, Monday night, hopefully he’ll either book a longer stay in the near future or record an album of these songs for those unfortunate enough to miss this show.