I’m trying to capture the romance, the complexity, the sophistication of those old jazz ballads but I wanted to do it with my melodies and playing the structure of the song my way.

New Standards is the eighteenth studio album by American soft jazz saxophonist Kenny G, released on December 3, 2021, through Concord.

Editors at AllMusic rated this album 4 out of 5 stars, with critic Matt Collar writing that "Kenny G wryly inserts himself into the pantheon of American Popular Songbook composers performing and writing songs that feel as if they were written during the heyday of traditional pop in the '50s and '60s", featuring "hushed and intimate ballads with just enough R&B keyboard, bass, and guitar textures to keep things contemporary" that "capture[s] the sound of traditional pop".

[1] Sebastian Scotney of The Arts Desk rated this album 1 out of 5 stars, writing that Kenny G's improvisation shows "sameness" and this music is inferior to jazz giants like Stan Getz.

[4] Writing for PopMatters, Will Layman took the opportunity to listen to this album and watch the documentary Listening to Kenny G to discuss superficial art, characterizing this as "innocuous background music" and the album features "performances [that] are devoid of swing, polyrhythm, jazz harmony, communication among bandmates in the moment, the individual daring of improvisation, and interaction with music history".