Bacharach & Costello – The Songs of Bacharach & Costello

I lived long enough to go from thinking that Burt Bacharach’s songs were the squarest songs in the world – probably solely because they were appreciated by the older generation – to thinking they were some of the coolest songs in the world, because, obviously, they are. That revelation came largely because so many of the artists that I really respect were such big fans of Bacharach. (That doesn’t mean anything, necessarily – everybody fawns over Leonard Cohen, but I just don’t get it. It’s fine, enjoy him!)

Set aside Hal David’s lyrics for a second – Bacharach’s musical moves in what are meant to be pop songs were just sui generis. There’s almost no doubt that despite my resistance to what I thought of in my callow early 20s as ’60s treacle, very much not rock ‘n’ roll, my absolutely fanatical love of the movie “Casino Royale” started turning my opinion around, thanks to “The Look of Love.”

Listen, you can hate “Casino Royale.” Many people do. Most people. Nearly everyone. It’s the only James Bond movie that I care about even slightly, and it’s the only one that I can remember a single thing about.

But that song, sung by Dusty Springfield – those breathy, oddly phrased lines, the absolute perfection of those absolutely Bacharachian chords. Quoting Farran Smith Nehme from RogerEbert.com: “I can’t imagine what it felt like for Bacharach to lose the Best Song Oscar to, and I wish I were kidding, ‘Talk to the Animals” from “Doctor Dolittle.'”

Well, that’s depressing.

Fast forward to those artists who recognized and were influenced by Bacharach, and in particular to Elvis Costello. Elvis is, as I’ve noted before, perhaps my favorite songwriter of all time. He takes crazy chances, he mixes up forms and contexts, and writes about things other than love. He does what interests him, and that’s always interesting to me. In 1996, what interested him was collaborating with Burt Bacharach on the song “God Give Me Strength,” from a great movie by Allison Anders, “Grace of My Heart.” Then they went on to develop what became “Painted From Memory.” Wow what an album – how was this that long ago? I remember watching the “Sessions at W. 54th” episode and being utterly captivated. Elvis exercising remarkable vocal control and expression, Bacharach leading a full-range orchestra through these remarkable songs.

For reasons I couldn’t begin to explain, “Toledo” stuck with me the strongest – 



But do people living in Toledo
Know that their name hasn’t traveled very well?
And does anybody in Ohio
Dream of that Spanish citadel?
But it’s no use saying that I love you
And how that girl really didn’t mean a thing to me
For if anyone should look into your eyes
It’s not forgiveness that they’re going to see

Heartbreaking in several directions. So is the rest of it. And it closes with the great “God Give Me Strength,” a fabulous song that intentionally echoes the girl group/Phil Spector song while at the same time sounding like the greatest song Brian Wilson never wrote.

So I had Painted from Memory on CD from moment one, back in 1997. But when this came out in March of 1993, with a whole bunch of additional songs that I didn’t have, I had to have it. Got a lot of plays last year, and now I’m thinking of putting it back into a Sunday morning rotation that was moved away from French pop and into more chanteuse-y stuffy, like Laufey. Mostly Laufey, in fact, which we’ll get to at some point.