The Divine Miss M

With her multi-faceted career and effervescent personality, Bette Midler has been an American favorite for four decades.

A singer, actress and comedienne, she has just released her latest CD, "Bette Midler Sings the Peggy Lee Songbook."

She joined co-anchor Julie Chen on Tuesday's The Early Show to talk about this latest project and, it being Valentine's Day, took a moment to muse on matters of love.

Midler has been married for 21 years to Martin von Haselberg and told Chen she still remembers some of the jokes she endured when she first tied the knot. "When I was first married, a friend of mine said to me when he met my husband, 'Oh, the man that tamed the beast.' "

Two decades later, she's learned a thing or two about love.

"Love doesn't stand still," she said. "It's constantly in motion, it's constantly transforming itself. You have to, I think, be accepting of the way it is. Those great chemical urges you have when you're a kid, they don't hang around, no matter how much Viagra you take. You have to get to the point where you see the person and see the person's soul and you adore the person's soul. That's really what we're here for, I think, ultimately."

Midler treated The Early Show to a performance from her new album, a Peggy Lee song called "The Folks Who Live on the Hill." And she explained that another long-time music star, Barry Manilow, was the driving force behind the album.

"He has these dreams, picturing me singing this material," Midler told Chen. "First of all, he loves this material. Secondly, he thinks I sing it well."