Bathhouse Betty
Studio album by Bette Midler
Released	September 15, 1998
Recorded	1997–98
Studio	Complex Studios (Los Angeles, CA)[1] Right Track Recording (New York, NY)[2] Unique Recording Studios (New York, NY)[3] Westwind Media (Burbank, CA)[4]
Genre	Pop
Length	44:58 48:27 (Japan)
Label	Warner Bros.
Producer	Arif Mardin,David Foster, Ted Templeman, Brock Walsh, Marc Shaiman, Chuckii Booker
Bette Midler chronology
Bette of Roses (1995) Bathhouse Betty (1998) Bette (2000)
Singles from Bathhouse Betty
"That's How Love Moves" "My One True Friend" "I'm Beautiful"

Bathhouse Betty is the ninth studio album by the American singerBette Midler, released in 1998.Bathhouse Betty was Midler's debut album forWarner Bros. Records, after having parted ways withsister labelAtlantic Records in 1995 following the moderate commercial success of her later-platinum certified albumBette of Roses.Bathhouse Betty was certified Gold by the RIAA and spawned the Billboard Dance Club chart topper "I'm Beautiful".

The title of the album,Bathhouse Betty, refers to Midler's early career when she performed her cabaret shows atgay bathhouses like theContinental Baths in New York which led to her becoming agay icon with a loyalLGBT following ever since. When Midler promoted the album she said in an interview, "Despite the way things turned out [with the AIDS crisis], I'm still proud of those days [when I got my start singing at the gay bathhouses]. I feel like I was at the forefront of the gay liberation movement, and I hope I did my part to help it move forward. So, I kind of wear the label of 'Bathhouse Betty' with pride."^[5]

Released some twenty-five years after Midler's breakthrough with the albumThe Divine Miss M,Bathhouse Betty was musically a comeback and a return to her roots and herhigh campMae-West-meets-the-Andrews-Sisters stage persona of the same name. The second single "I'm Beautiful"— a remake of a song byhouse music groupUncanny Alliance - opens with the spoken line, "This is the Divine Miss M and I'm here to share with you some rare and stimulating insight about my cosmic fabulosity!" and effectively set the tone for the following album.

"Ukulele Lady", a tribute to Midler's nativeHawaii which she had first performed live in the 1997 TV specialDiva Las Vegas, is an old evergreen written byGus Kahn andRichard A. Whiting, published in 1925 and first made famous byVaughn De Leath—and later recorded by among othersMiss Piggy onThe Muppet Show. Other songs onBathhouse Betty include early girl group classics likePatti LaBelle and the Bluebelles' debut single "I Sold My Heart to the Junkman" and 1950'sR&BchanteuseBig Maybelle's "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show", the latter featuring swing-rock bandRoyal Crown Revue. Contemporary covers includeBen Folds'tragicomic "Boxing", an imagined monologue byMuhammad Ali, originally featured onBen Folds Five's 1995 self-titleddebut album,Dave Frishberg's "I'm Hip" andDick Gallagher andMark Waldrop's "Laughing Matters", taken from Howard Crabtree's 1996 gay musical revueWhen Pigs Fly. "Big Socks", an original written and produced byChuckii Booker, is a tongue-in-cheek contemporaryR&B track whose lyrics debate the supposed correlation between the size of men's feet and other body parts; "Don't brag about your body, baby, and say that you're packin' a lot, 'cause all I see besides your big feet is that you got big socks."

Bathhouse Betty was not all campiness and laughs; the album opens with the ballad "Song of Bernadette" written byLeonard Cohen, Bill Elliott andJennifer Warnes, and first recorded by Warnes on her 1987 albumFamous Blue Raincoat. The title and the lyrics of the song refer toBernadette Soubirous, a young French girl in the mid-19th century who claimed to have seen theVirgin Mary on several occasions. Bernadette was subsequently declared insane by the villagers ofLourdes, butcanonized by theCatholic Church and proclaimedSaint Bernadette after her death. "Lullaby in Blue", which Midler described as her personal favourite on the album, was co-written by Leonard Cohen's sonAdam and is a song about a woman who gave up a child for adoption: "I've never heard a pop song about a person who gives their child up and is missing the child... The first time I heard that song, I burst into tears."^[6] The first single released from the album was the melancholy "My One True Friend", composed byDavid Foster,Carole King andCarole Bayer Sager and the lead song from the movieOne True Thing which starredMeryl Streep andWilliam Hurt.

One track from theBathhouse Betty sessions,Julie Gold's "Heaven", was only released as a single B-side and featured as a bonus track on the Japanese edition of the album. Gold had previously written Midler's 1990 hit single "From a Distance".

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[7]
Robert Christgau	[8]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[9]

The album received mixed reviews from music critics. Michael Gallucci from AllMusic website gave the album two out of five stars and wrote that it "tries to be all things to all Bette Midler fans" including "high camp for her loyal, and early, drag cult", "straight-up covers of big-league songwriters, both veteran and modern" and "big, bad ballads for the people who made her a moderately successful Top 40 and box office draw". According to him it lacks personality and is "almost like looking at a photo album filled with vaguely familiar faces, none of which you really know that well." Robert Christgau gave the album one star and chose "I'm Beautiful" and "Lullabye in Blue" as the best moments of the album.

Bathhouse Betty reached number 32 on theBillboard 200; "My One True Friend" reached number 16 on theAdult Contemporary chart. "I'm Beautiful", which featured dance remixes by among othersVictor Calderone,Danny Tenaglia and composer Brinsley Evans himself, was a major dance-floor hit, becoming a number 1 on theHot Dance Club Play chart and number 8 on Hot Dance Music/Maxi Singles Sales.

• Bette Midler albums
• 1998 albums
• Albums produced by Arif Mardin
• Warner Records albums
• Gay bathhouses

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