Noted Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim personally penned additional lyrics for the songs "Putting It Together" and "Send in the Clowns" on request of the singer.

Streisand started her career on Broadway, and so considered this album in sense returning to her roots, after two decades of recording popular music of the day.

Streisand's record label, Columbia Records, objected to the planned content as it was not pop songs, but Streisand had signed a contract at the beginning of her career which gave her full creative control in exchange for lower earnings; at this point she stressed that, due to the contract, she had "the right to sing what I want to sing".

The lead single, "Putting It Together" from Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George, was rewritten to be about the dichotomy between art and commerce in the music industry.

[7] In 1993, Entertainment Weekly looked back nostalgically on the album as "the work of a supreme singer-actress still unspoiled enough to fall in love with the characters she sings".

[9] Writing at the time of the release, Rolling Stone took a slightly more cynical view, although after criticizing the album for its self-consciousness and overproduction, reviewer Francis Davis did concede that the album "works somehow, if only as a reminder of what a neglected wealth of riches Broadway offers and what a marvelous singer Streisand is when she's not trying to pass herself off as a rock star".