“Not all songs have a story,” David Foster says. “But these five do.”
He would know: In a career that stretches across more than half a century — and which took him from his native Canada to his longtime home of Los Angeles — Foster has written, produced, arranged, played on, executive-ized or reality-TV-coached the performance of an endless array of songs, among them some of the biggest (and most shamelessly sentimental) in pop history.
Celine Dion’s “Because You Loved Me”? “The Prayer” by Dion and Andrea Bocelli? “Glory of Love” from “The Karate Kid Part II”? All Foster joints, which doesn’t even get to the work he’s done with — deep breath here — Michael Jackson, Barbra Streisand , Chaka Khan, Madonna, Michael Bublé , Kenny Rogers, Josh Groban, Lionel Richie and Mary J. Blige .
On Sunday night at the Hollywood Bowl, Foster will look back at this lifetime of songs in an all-star concert to mark his 75th birthday. The lineup includes Bocelli, Bublé, Groban, Jennifer Hudson, Charlie Puth, Kristin Chenoweth, Brian McKnight, El Debarge and, not least, Foster’s wife, singer and actor Katharine McPhee.