Cd Tribute To Diana Nice But Lacks Inspiration

Various artists “Diana, Princess of Wales: Tribute”

In the days after Princess Diana’s death Aug. 31 in a car crash in Paris, many pop musicians scrambled to assemble a proper tribute.

Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind ‘97” was the immediate focal point and has since sold more than 30 million copies to become the top-selling single in history.

Now comes a double-CD in her honor, “Diana, Princess of Wales: Tribute,” which hit stores Tuesday.

It’s a tribute project that is lovely in many ways, as an attempt to express sorrow, channel grief, and search for hope amid tragedy. The double CD achieves at least some of these purposes - helped by a smattering of new songs by Peter Gabriel, Sinead O’Connor, Aretha Franklin, Annie Lennox, and others - though there is still the lingering feeling that this could have been more than it is.

The CDs will no doubt raise millions of charity dollars for the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, thus further ennobling a pop industry that has previously rallied for such causes as Live Aid, Farm Aid and Amnesty International. But, from a purely musical viewpoint, it’s frustrating that not more artists came up with original material of distinction. Most just donated past songs so that, too often, the tribute sounds like an adult-contemporary “Greatest Hits” album.

There is an overload of lush, mournful ballads that individually are often compelling but collectively sound like a downbeat blur. An example is the sequencing of previously released tracks on the first CD, with some of the saddest songs these artists have done, from Paul McCartney’s “Little Willow” (written for a female friend who died), Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” (associated with his son who died), R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” (with the line “Sometimes everything is wrong”), and Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia” (about an AIDS sufferer). Hearing these songs back to back makes for agonizing listening.

No one expected a party album, but it would have been nice to have more songs offering rays of hope. And another tune, Puff Daddy’s “I’ll Be Missing You,” is a tribute to fallen rapper Notorious B.I.G., not to Diana.

There is nothing from Elton John, not even from his archives. Also missing are songs from such fellow Brits as Sting, Mark Knopfler and Phil Collins, all of whom had been announced for the project, which was produced by Richard Branson’s V2 Records with the support of the royal family.

And a major oddity is that there is no ensemble British all-star tribute song, yet there’s an American ensemble tune by the so-called Red Hot R&B All Stars. Titled “Every Nation,” it was written and produced by R. Kelly and includes vocals by Mary J. Blige, Lauryn Hill of the Fugees, Tony Rich, Gerald Levert of the O’Jays, Curtis Mayfield and Montel Jordan.

This song is targeted as the tribute record’s key radio track, and a video is forthcoming as well. It’s a beautiful, call-and-response tune (sample lyric: “We thank you for teaching us how to love”), but some of the luster is lost when one realizes it was recorded for the “Red Hot” series that benefits AIDS work and then held out for this project.

Thus, there’s a certain piggybacking, bandwagon mentality to this tribute, though that’s not to negate the new efforts. While there’s little new material that is sublime, there are at least a couple of fine examples in Sinead O’Connor’s acoustic “Make Me a Channel of Your Peace” (a Catholic hymn) and Gabriel’s “In the Sun.”

The Gabriel tune is not just haunting but appears to be a personal letter to Diana. “I picture you in the sun wondering what went wrong,” Gabriel sings over a trance-inducing synth line. He ends majestically with the prayerful chant, “May God’s love be with you always.” The song, nearly seven minutes long, is a brilliant plea for understanding in a chaotic world.

Only one song mentions Diana by name, and that’s Franklin’s gloriously rearranged gospel rave-up, “I’ll Fly Away.” Besides showcasing her improvisational vocal flights, it finds Franklin somberly pronouncing, “We salute and pay tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales.”

Other tracks bearing a “previously unreleased” stamp aren’t nearly as transforming. There’s a live version of Mariah Carey’s “Hero” (nice song, but sung almost exactly like the album version), a bizarre treatment of Shakespeare’s “Sonnet No. 18” by Bryan Ferry, and a reasonably bouncy (finally, something up-tempo) Tina Turner tune, “Love Is a Beautiful Thing.”

The most unexpected new song is not by a pop star but by a 15-year-old girl, Lissa Hermans, who is blind and performs the final track, “I’m in Love With the World,” with singers from the Chicken Shed Theatre Company in north London. Princess Diana had campaigned for Chicken Shed, which helps raise money for special needs children, and brought Princes William and Harry to see the company perform.

Hermans (who also once sang “God Save the Queen” privately for Diana) is spirited but syrupy in lines like “let your world fall in love with you.” It’s typical of the abundance of sentimentality on this project but also of the lack of sublime peaks that this tribute could really use. Granted that it was rushed together for the Christmas market, but taking more time would have been advisable. Diana deserved it.