One way to understand the scale of Burt Bacharach's achievement is simply to list who sang his songs.
Dionne Warwick. Dusty Springfield. Tom Jones. Cilla Black. The Carpenters. Aretha Franklin. Elvis Presley. The Beatles. Gene Pitney. Jackie DeShannon. B.J. Thomas. Herb Alpert. Christopher Cross. Elvis Costello.
This is not a list of cover artists. Each of these names represents one of the defining voices of their era, and each of them recorded at least one Bacharach song that became essential to their own story. No single composer in the history of twentieth-century popular music gave this many important, different singers their defining moments.
The Recording Academy named him "music's greatest living composer" in 2008. The Library of Congress awarded him and Hal David the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song — the first songwriting duo ever to receive it.
Burt Bacharach. Chapter 2 traces where his songs went, whose voices carried them, and how they eventually reached the top of Hollywood's most celebrated cinematic nights.
🌹 Tom Jones — "What's New Pussycat?" and the Sound of a Career-Making Explosion
Begin with what may be the most surprising pairing.
1965. Woody Allen's comedy film What's New Pussycat? The title song, written by Bacharach and David, was given to a young Welsh singer with a voice built for stadiums — Tom Jones.
The result was not subtle. Tom Jones's opening "Whooooa, whoa-whoa-oh!" became one of the most recognizable vocal entrances in pop history. The song peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
It was also the song that established Tom Jones in the American market.
Bacharach later spoke about the casting: "His voice is incredibly powerful, but the control in the detail is remarkable. That ascending melody line in the chorus — almost nobody else could have sung it the way Tom did."
The specific vocal demands of Bacharach's compositions — the unusual interval leaps, the syncopated rhythms, the long melodic phrases that require genuine breath control — meant that not every singer could deliver them. Tom Jones could.
🌸 Cilla Black — "Anyone Who Had a Heart" and the Beautiful Reversal
Music history contains a handful of moments where the cover version outperformed the original in a different market.
"Anyone Who Had a Heart" is one of the most famous examples.
Written for Dionne Warwick, who took it to number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1963, the song was subsequently recorded by Cilla Black for the British market. Her version reached number one on the UK Singles Chart in 1964 and stayed there for three weeks.
The difference between the two recordings is instructive. Dionne's version carries a quality of controlled, sophisticated grief — the ache of someone who has learned to contain their pain. Cilla's version is rawer, more nakedly vulnerable, less defended. The same song produces two completely different emotional experiences.
This is precisely what made Bacharach's songs valuable to multiple artists across multiple markets. They were not fixed in a single emotional register. They were, in a real sense, open.
🎸 The Beatles Recorded a Bacharach Song — "Baby It's You"
In 1963, The Beatles included "Baby It's You" on their debut album Please Please Me.
The song had been written by Bacharach and Mack David (Hal's older brother), and first recorded by The Shirelles in 1961 — where it reached number eight on the Hot 100. When The Beatles, still in their early years of recording other writers' material, chose songs for their debut, this one made the cut.
This detail carries a specific weight. The Beatles were selecting from the best material available, filtered through their own sense of what was worth playing. The fact that a Bacharach song made that cut — in competition with everything else available in 1962 and 1963 — says something about the intrinsic quality of the composition.
Bacharach later reflected: "The Shirelles' original was wonderful. But the Beatles' version had its own completely different appeal. The song being reborn through different voices — that's what music is."
💛 The Carpenters — "(They Long to Be) Close to You" and the Right Voice at Last
Richard Chamberlain recorded it first, in 1963. Not a hit.
Dionne Warwick recorded it as an album track in 1964. Not a hit.
Herb Alpert was offered it. He recorded a version he was unhappy with. It was shelved.
Then, in 1970, The Carpenters recorded it.
"(They Long to Be) Close to You" went to number one on the pop chart and became the breakthrough that launched The Carpenters into international stardom. It won them the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.
Why did their version succeed when others had not? The answer is Karen Carpenter's voice.
Karen's contralto — low, warm, carrying a particular quality of wistfulness without ever becoming dark — was exactly what the song had been waiting for. The song holds within it two feelings simultaneously: longing and warmth. Karen's voice held both in precisely the right proportion.
Bacharach described his reaction to her recording: "I was moved to tears. That doesn't happen often with your own songs. Karen entered the song and she was there."
The song sold more than ten million copies worldwide. It remains, perhaps, the clearest example of a Bacharach composition finding its ideal voice after years of searching.
🎤 Aretha Franklin — "I Say a Little Prayer" and the Unexpected Masterpiece
When Dionne Warwick recorded "I Say a Little Prayer" in 1967, Bacharach was not happy with the result.
"I thought I blew it," he said. "The tempo seemed too fast. I never wanted the record to come out."
But it came out, and it was a hit.
Then, in 1968, Aretha Franklin was in the studio one day and simply started singing it — for fun, with her backing singers The Sweet Inspirations. Producer Jerry Wexler heard what was happening and understood that this needed to be recorded.
Aretha's version peaked at number ten on the Hot 100 and number four in the UK. More significantly, it became what is widely considered one of Aretha Franklin's greatest recordings — and one of the definitively iconic pop performances of the era.
Bacharach's response to this outcome was generous and precise: "Aretha just made a far better record. She was far superior to Dionne's record. She made the best record."
Today, "I Say a Little Prayer" is remembered as an Aretha Franklin song. This is one of the most vivid demonstrations of what Bacharach compositions could do: become so completely inhabited by a particular voice that the song seemed to belong to the singer rather than the writer.
🌟 Dusty Springfield — "The Look of Love" and the Language of Desire
Written for the 1967 Casino Royale film, "The Look of Love" as performed by Dusty Springfield represents perhaps the most complete single expression of what Burt Bacharach could do as a composer.
The bossa nova pulse underneath. The jazz harmonic language in the strings. The tempo so slow it seems suspended in time. And Dusty Springfield's voice — not pushing, not reaching, simply inhabiting the song the way a person inhabits a room they know well.
Bacharach described his intention: "I wanted to express that kind of sensuality in music. Slowly, like walking through a dream."
The song has since been covered by Sergio Mendes, Diana Krall, Isaac Hayes, Claudine Longet, and Gladys Knight & the Pips. It functions today as a jazz standard — taught in conservatories, performed in clubs, cited by musicians as a reference point for sophisticated harmonic writing. That a pop song written for a film could achieve this status says everything about what Bacharach was actually constructing.
🎬 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid — A Western Miracle
1969. Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Director George Roy Hill. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
George Roy Hill had strong faith in Bacharach and invited him to write the complete score for the film — an unusual level of trust for a composer whose primary reputation was as a pop songwriter rather than a film scorer.
The film's most famous musical moment is the bicycle scene: Newman riding through bright countryside, entertaining Katharine Ross, while B.J. Thomas sings "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head."
What is extraordinary about this song in context is precisely what makes it work: it sounds nothing like a Western. No gunfire, no saloon piano, no open-range loneliness. Instead, an upbeat pop song about a man who refuses to complain about getting rained on. Playful, light, and completely suited to the irreverent personalities of the two outlaws at the center of the story.
"Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. The complete score won Best Original Score. Two Academy Awards for one film, on the same night. At the time, this was almost without precedent.
☀️ B.J. Thomas — The Story Behind the Recording
The road to B.J. Thomas singing "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" involved several other possibilities.
Ray Stevens was considered. Bob Dylan was reportedly approached. Dylan declined. Various other options were explored. Eventually, B.J. Thomas — a singer moving between country and pop, with a voice of unusual flexibility — got the call.
On the day of the recording session, Thomas was reportedly unwell. And yet what he delivered was, in Bacharach's assessment, exactly right. "That cheerfulness, that freedom — that was everything the song needed. B.J. delivered it perfectly."
The song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It remains, more than fifty years later, one of the most immediately recognizable recordings of its era — played regularly on radio stations around the world, still showing up in film and television soundtracks, still capable of lifting the mood of any room it enters.
🌙 From “Close to You” to “One Less Bell to Answer”: Bridging the Path to the 1970s
If “(They Long to Be) Close to You” signaled the dawn of the 1970s, Burt Bacharach’s compositions continued to find new life through a succession of distinct voices.
“One Less Bell to Answer,” recorded by The 5th Dimension, soared to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1970. Its poignant lyrics—capturing the quiet void of daily life after a breakup—struck a deep chord with listeners everywhere.
Meanwhile, “24 Hours from Tulsa,” originally written for Gene Pitney, reached No. 17 in the US and No. 5 in the UK. With its vivid, road-movie narrative style, the track stands as a testament to Bacharach’s mastery of cinematic storytelling in the early 1960s.
And then there was “Casino Royale” for Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass. Known primarily as an instrumental piece, it serves as a brilliant example of Bacharach’s sophisticated jazz arranging. The distinctive fusion of Alpert’s trumpet with infectious Latin rhythms helped cement Bacharach’s reputation as a premier film composer.
🏆 Three Academy Awards — The Complete Picture
🌱As a middle school student, I was captivated by the warm, bright voice of B.J. Thomas singing "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head." I begged my father to buy me the EP record, and I still remember walking home that day, clutching it to my chest.
It wasn't until four or five years later that I learned the song had won an Academy Award — and that it was from the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. When I realized that, the feeling of that boy walking home with his record came flooding back.
Burt Bacharach received the Academy Award for Original Song or Score three times:
1970 (for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid): Best Original Song — "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head"
1970 (for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid): Best Original Score
1982 (for Arthur): Best Original Song — "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)"
"Arthur's Theme," written with Carole Bayer Sager, Christopher Cross, and Peter Allen, and performed by Christopher Cross, reached number one in the United States and became one of the defining recordings of 1981. It confirmed Bacharach as not merely a pop songwriter but a complete musical craftsman capable of defining the emotional landscape of a film.
Placed alongside Henry Mancini, John Barry, and Ennio Morricone, Burt Bacharach belongs in the first rank of twentieth-century film composers.
🎼 Classical, Jazz, Bossa Nova — The Compositional Method Reconsidered
Across Chapter 2, we have traced the many voices that carried Bacharach's songs. It is worth pausing to ask why those songs proved so adaptable — why they worked for Tom Jones and Karen Carpenter, for Aretha Franklin and Dusty Springfield, for B.J. Thomas and The Beatles.
The answer lies in what Bacharach built into every composition.
His classical training at Mannes and with Milhaud gave him the structural discipline to construct genuinely complex harmonic progressions — and then hide that complexity behind apparently effortless melody.
His absorption of bebop through Gillespie and Parker gave him a rhythmic imagination that refused to settle for the predictable. His songs don't always land where you expect them to land. And yet they feel inevitable once they arrive.
His bossa nova sensibility — absorbed through the Dietrich tours of South America — gave his rhythms a floating quality, a refusal to sit too hard on any beat. The groove in "Walk On By," the drift in "The Look of Love" — this is bossa nova filtered through the sensibility of a New York pop composer.
And his songwriter's instinct — the ability to make all of this feel like a simple, singable melody — is what no music school can teach.
The Recording Academy called him "music's greatest living composer" in 2008. The Library of Congress gave him and Hal David the Gershwin Prize in 2012 — the first songwriting duo ever honored.
🌍 More Than 1,000 Artists — A Legacy Still in Motion
More than 1,000 artists have recorded Burt Bacharach songs. That number represents not popularity but versatility.
Dionne Warwick brought R&B emotional depth. Tom Jones brought rock and roll power. Karen Carpenter brought country wistfulness. Aretha Franklin brought soul. Dusty Springfield brought bossa nova sensuality. Each singer found something different in the same song — and each version felt authentic to that singer's identity.
Bacharach's melodies were vessels. Wide enough, open enough, deep enough to hold whatever a particular voice needed to pour into them.
Burt Bacharach died on February 8, 2023, at the age of 94. But the faucet, as one critic wrote, remains open.
More than 1,000 melodies, still traveling. 🎹
https://open.spotify.com/track/4Jg9cj0F6SuTjYKrwkqBzE?si=rlrcAtw9Qv6-pG1Z5caA1A&utm_source=copy-link&sci=spotify%3Acard-config%3A5FaeOeJaCdyZ4zcxiqwAGC
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