Melissa Errico Will Release American Songbook Album 'I Can Dream Can't I?'

TONY Award-nominated Broadway actress, singer and author Melissa Errico has announced her new album, I Can Dream Can't I?, out January 30th, 2026. Songs from the album will roll out every other week, with a special three-song holiday bundle ahead of the full release.

She has also shared the first single—a dazzling rendition of the American Songbook gem “When In Rome (I Do As The Romans Do)”—out now. Written in 1962 by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh for the musical Little Me, “When In Rome (I Do As The Romans Do)” became a favorite of performers from Peggy Lee and Barbra Streisand to Coleman himself. With words by Carolyn Leigh and music by Cy Coleman, it is one of a bouquet of pop songs the duo wrote in the 1950s and 1960s—a kind of last breath of the Cole Porter legacy in American standards. All pure winking wit and melody for its own sweet sake, these are songs that Stephen Sondheim (though grumpily doubting the team's theatricality) admitted he wished he had written. Where Coleman himself, and Tony Bennett after him, sang this song with sardonic detachment, Melissa brings her own unique mischief and emotion to it, turning the wit into warmth and the winking into something closer to wonder—making Leigh's lyric an overture to the story of an American woman's loving summer return to Europe.

The official video sets a witty, loose-limbed visual tone for Cy Coleman & Carolyn Leigh's playful 1964 song from “In The Name of Love,” Peggy Lee's jazz & pop album, and Barbra Streisand later that year. British filmmaker Matthew Edginton uses vintage photography, studio footage and animation for an ironic AI-retro style with a narrative about kindred souls. We are invited into Melissa's imagination as she launches a collection that asks: “I Can Dream, Can't I?” Listen HERE; watch HERE.

About the track, Melissa says, “I first learned it from Blossom Dearie, and when I found myself in Rome this summer, I kept laughing to myself and hearing it in my mind. It's about always being true to you, darling, in my fashion! I love music that is woven around wit, songs that make you smile.”

Accompanied by Tedd Firth on piano, I Can Dream Can't I? is a collection of standards that are not standard. Though many of the songs are familiar, even classics, they evade the usual categories of American music: the torch song, the ‘I want' number, the patter-comedy turn, the wash-that-man-out-of-my-hair song. An intuitively discovered body of work, these are songs of conversation and reflection, songs that ask themselves questions privately, more than they declare their desires loudly and publicly. There are moons and Junes in these songs, but reality too.

An unusual number of the choices, including the title song, are questions asked, from the title down to the last bar. Some are sweet erotic metaphors — “Dancing on the Ceiling”; “Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year,” explored for their own sweet sakes. “Has any lyric ever been more dream-like than the incomparable Larry Hart's for “Dancing on the Ceiling”? Johnny Burke's quiet lyric for the great Van Heusen tune “But Beautiful” dares to use the prosaic-seeming word ‘discussions' in its verse (“When I hear discussions on what love is”) and never does say what love is, deciding that it could be all of these things, though it does seem beautiful, when the discussion ends.

Here are songs of self-reliance and self-reflection, often sad, even when the feelings resolve in equipoise. For Melissa, even a torch song isn't a torch song. It's more of a searchlight. A love story made of sighs and secrets rather than neat happy endings, and a series of evasions and implications. Love as an obstacle course run by adults rather than meadows measured by children. Spring will be a little late this year. Only a little, but that's enough.

These songs are drawn from what Melissa calls “the field of poppies from which sprang Sondheim's opium.” Errico's years singing Sondheim, in the ever-extended Sondheim project, have brought her a new and unusual delicacy with the standards. Her diction, her clarinet of a voice, and all the skill learned in the classroom of the self-conscious ironies and comma-bound contradictions of Sondheim, are applied to rediscover the emotional resources of the American Songbook. Music by Frank Loesser, Cy Coleman, Duke Ellington, Peggy Lee, Van Heusen, Rodgers & Hart, Jerome Kern, Sammy Fain, Dave Frishberg, Dori Caymmi, and Joni Mitchell. Words by Carolyn Leigh, Dorothy Fields, Alan & Marilyn Bergman, Oscar Hammerstein, Johnny Burke and more.

In the end, I Can Dream Can't I? is a nuanced and powerful view into the American Songbook through Melissa's own individual lens. Check out the full track listing below.

So far, 2025 has been a landmark year for Errico. She made her London concert hall debut at Cadogan Hall with Sondheim in the City Live!, earning a standing ovation and recently joined Alec Baldwin for a performance in East Hampton, NY during “The Fitzgeralds: A Reading with Music.” This fall, she launches two new live projects: “The Life and Loves of a Broadway Baby” shows in Detroit, MI on October 11th, and The Streisand Effect in November, performing alongside Barbra Streisand's band in Long Beach, CA and New York, NY. See all tour dates and ticket links HERE.

Tracklist

1. “When In Rome (I Do As The Romans Do)” (In the Name of Love, 1964) — Music by Cy Coleman, Lyrics by Carolyn Leigh

2. “I Can Dream, Can't I?” (Right This Way, 1937) — Music by Sammy Fain, Lyrics by Irving Kahal

3. “I Didn't Know About You” (1944) — Music by Duke Ellington, Lyrics by Bob Russell

4. “There'll Be Another Spring” (Beauty and the Beat, 1959) — Music & Lyrics by Peggy Lee, Contributions: Hubie Wheeler

5. “But Beautiful” (The Road to Rio, 1947)— Music by James Van Heusen, Lyrics by Johnny Burke

6. “Dancing On The Ceiling” (Evergreen, 1930) — Music by Richard Rodgers, Lyrics by Lorenz Hart

7. “Remind Me” (One Night in the Tropics, 1940) — Music by Jerome Kern, Lyrics by Dorothy Fields

8. “Like A Lover” (Look Around, 1967) — Music by Dori Caymmi, Lyrics by Alan & Marilyn Bergman

9. “Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year” (Christmas Holiday, 1943) — Music & Lyrics by Frank Loesser

10. “All In Fun” (Very Warm for May, 1939)— Music by Jerome Kern, Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein

11. “Listen Here” (1979) — Music & Lyrics by David Frishberg

12. “Both Sides Now” (Clouds, 1966) — Music & Lyrics by Joni Mitchell

Bonus Track:

13. “After You, Who?” (Gay Divorce, 1932) — Music & Lyrics by Cole Porter