Sunday Songs: And Always Love Me. Why Won't You?


The love fest for all things Bacharach continues and is actually nothing new in these parts. Check this out:Bacharach on column. this week all three are Dionne Warwick recordings--Warwick, the woman who nearly drowned her own exceptional musical resume in the "Psychic Network." a lot of noise in the past has been made about Andrew Lloyd Webber being Giacomo Puccini's cultural heir. Before Andrew there was Burt and a case can be made for the Bacharach body of work, especially in its early years, to carry that mantle.




Clear evidence exists within the exceptional "Anyone Who Had A Heart." It was a rare instance when a song of this calibre actually made it into the top ten on the pop chart. "The song starts with sixteenth note triplets and one point veers from 5/4 to 4/4 to 7/8 and back to 5/4 in the space of eight measures. 'I didn't realize how complex it was until I went to write it out, and I saw that it was changing bars," says Burt. 'It just felt natural to me.' ... Yes the song is complicated; back then, the musicians at The Apollo used to complain mightily when asked to perform it. ('In the end they all thanked me very much, because it kept their chops up,' says Dionne.)But that's not the point really. 'Anyone Who Had A Heart' is an astonishing work of art, a song filled with desperation and beauty, breathlessness and loneliness. The song winds up with a terrifying fade ('Take me in his arms/And always love me/Why won't you?'), and then it's gone, a little less than three minutes later."




It's the kind of catharsis readily adaptable to the adolescent homosexual in the throes of the climactic social changes about to happen in the 60s. With those yearnings in mind the music is accompanied with not only an image of Burt but also what the object of those adolescent yearnings might have been.

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