Steppin’ Out by Tony Bennett

Steppin' Out, Tony Bennett's 1993 salute to Fred Astaire, kept his unlikely comeback rolling. Released on Columbia and produced by David Kahne, it followed the previous year's Perfectly Frank to a gold record in the United States, proof that a crooner who scored his first number-one hit back in 1951 could win over a generation raised on flannel and feedback without changing a thing.

The approach is elegance itself: Bennett taking on the Astaire songbook with warm, easy phrasing and a swing that makes the old tunes feel freshly pressed. The video for "Steppin' Out with My Baby" got airplay on MTV, of all places, which tells you how far his reach had stretched. The album won the Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance in 1994.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.