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Like its predecessor Bathhouse Betty, Bette Midler's Bette spends a good deal of its playing time on ambitious, smartly chosen songs. Even the biggest pop-ballad success here is a Dionne Warwick-style take on the Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach weeper "God Give Me Strength," rather than a dire work of schlock such as "The Wind Beneath My Wings." Elsewhere, Midler continues to indulge her cheeky side (the album's working title was Bette, Bath and Beyond) with Kirsty MacColl's Cuban-influenced "In These Shoes," and revives Teddy Pendergrass's classic "Love TKO" with an impressively throaty vocal. The handful of Hallmark-esque tunes near the disc's end doesn't diminish the subtlety and tastefulness of the rest of it.
