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Kenny G Vibez

The best-selling instrumental musician in history, and the most mocked. Thirty-nine tracks make the case that the mockery has always been slightly beside the point.

Kenneth Gorelick, reconsidered

Kenny G has sold something in the region of seventy-five million records, which makes him the most commercially successful instrumentalist in the history of recorded music. He also holds a Guinness record for the longest held note on a saxophone — over forty-five minutes, using circular breathing — which tells you he is a genuinely capable player whatever else is true.

The critical hostility is real and has a specific origin: Pat Metheny's famously furious 2000 essay attacking his overdubbed duet with a Louis Armstrong recording. That criticism was about a specific act, not about the man's whole existence, but it hardened into a general contempt that has followed him ever since.

The 2021 documentary Listening to Kenny G treated the question seriously and reached no comfortable conclusion, which is probably the right answer.

What to listen for

"Songbird" is the record. A top five pop hit for an instrumental in 1987 is close to unheard of, and it remains a well-constructed piece of writing — that melody is genuinely memorable, which is the hardest thing in instrumental music.

The standards material is where the playing is most exposed. "The Shadow Of Your Smile," "The Look Of Love" (here twice) and "Besame Mucho" are straightforward readings, played cleanly.

The bossa nova selections are the surprise and the best argument on the list. "Desafinado," "Corcovado" and "Bossa Antigua" come from his Brazilian project, and the idiom — which rewards a soft, breathy tone and a light touch — suits him better than almost anything else he has recorded.

The collaborations are what they are: Robin Thicke, Babyface, Richard Marx, and Burt Bacharach himself on "Alfie." The Bacharach one is worth hearing.

"If I Ain't Got You" and "You're Beautiful" are the pop covers, and "Peace" is the quietest.

Go deeper

Duotones (1986) and Breathless (1992) are the two albums — the latter one of the best-selling instrumental albums ever made.

Watch the documentary; it is genuinely thoughtful about why this music provokes what it provokes.

And then, in fairness to the criticism, go and hear what the instrument can do: Stan Getz for the tone Kenny G is reaching for, Grover Washington Jr. for the same commercial lane done with more grit, and Wayne Shorter or Sonny Rollins for the other end of the possibility. Both things can be true.

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