Record #311: Burt Bacharach – The Man! His Songs (1965)

Record #311: Burt Bacharach - The Man! His Songs (1965)
Burt Bacharach has been a staple in pop music for so long that it’s strange for me to consider a time when he would be releasing his songs for the first time. His standards–Close to You, I Say a...

 

Burt Bacharach has been a staple in pop music for so long that it’s strange for me to consider a time when he would be releasing his songs for the first time.

His standards–Close to You, I Say a Little Prayer for You, and What’s New Pussycat among others–are so timeless and indelible that it sometimes seems like they’ve always existed. And certainly doesn’t seem like Burt Bacharach would have been at one point a young pup with only three LPs to his name. What’s even stranger is hearing songs that didn’t quite make it into the canon. Pussycat is here, as well as the original version of (There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me (which I didn’t realize was a Burt song), but most of these songs are strangers to me. But it isn’t by fault of any weakness they have–had any of these appeared in a film or had a notable remake, they’d be just as permanent as the hits.