James Newton Howard's score for
Barbra Streisand's
The Prince of Tides is a delicate, pretty set of repetitive orchestral themes. Indeed, for a soundtrack, it is amazingly consistent in terms of tone, continually employing swelling strings and slowly played piano figures in what sounds more like music for an air freshener commercial than a drama.
Streisand sings two songs at the end, neither of them heard as a vocal selection in the actual film. One is the old
J. Fred Coots and
Sam M. Lewis standard "For All We Know," and the other is the newly written "Places That Belong to You," with music by
Howard and lyrics by
Alan and
Marilyn Bergman in their "The Way Were" mode. Both songs are typically well sung, but the oldie is the better tune. ~ William Ruhlmann