Artists & Bands

Burt Bacharach tunes

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One of the most important composers of the 20th century!

Burt Bacharach is an American composer, producer, and pianist who’s written hundreds of well-known songs starting in the late 1950s and still going strong.

A six-time Grammy Award winner and three-time Academy Award winner, his songs have been recorded by more than 1,000 different artists. Because of this, Bacharach is widely considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century.

His most well-known hits include Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head, (They Long To Be) Close To You, Walk On By, Arthur’s Theme (The Best That You Can Do), That’s What Friends Are For, The Look Of Love, What The World Needs Now, and I Say A Little Prayer.

Arthur’s Theme (The Best That You Can Do) & (They Long To Be) Close To You

Written for the motion picture Arthur, starring Liza Minnelli and Dudley Moore, Arthur’s Theme bagged an Oscar for best song in 1981.

Sung by Christopher Cross, the gorgeous Arthur’s Theme is one of Bacharach’s greatest masterpieces. It topped the American Billboard charts and reached the top ten the world over.

In Close To You, we find yet another one of Bacharach’s masterpieces.

Released by several artists before the Carpenters launched their career with it, (They Long To Be) Close To You hit the top spot in the charts and beat both The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel to a Grammy Award in 1971.

Burt Bacharach’s last great album

You may think that Bacharach’s career was over and done with as we entered the new millennium but as late as 2020, he released a 5-Song EP with Daniel Tashian entitled Blue Umbrella.

This is by far my favourite record of that year. The three tunes, Bells Of St. Augustine, Whistling In The Dark, and the title track Blue Umbrella are all sensational compositions and amazing-sounding recordings.

Sadly, this EP hasn’t taken the world by storm, perhaps it just needs more time to enter the public domain, just like it took Burt a while to get Close To You going, half a century earlier.

There’s a great podcast called Broken Record with Daniel, talking about getting to know Burt and how he was still dedicated until his final days.

There is still some material to be released from their sessions, unfortunately, Burt will not get to hear the finished tunes as he passed away on the 8th of February 2023.

I’ve included the podcast episode in the playlist above.