Burt Bacharach has written hundreds of songs, most from the 1950s through the 1980s. Of those, 73 have made the US Top 40. This one took the longest to get there. Bacharach wrote it in 1963, when he recorded a demo of it with Dionne Warwick. Two different singles were released in 1964, by two different singers, Lou Johnson in the US, Sandie Shaw in the UK. Shaw’s version hit No. 1 in the UK; Johnson’s didn’t chart.
Over the next several years more than two dozen artists, including Peggy Lee, Johnny Mathis, Patti LaBelle and Jay and the Americans, covered it. Almost every arrangement mirrored the demo by having a trumpet play the opening riff. But the tune didn’t crack the Top 20 (R.B. Greaves took it to No. 29 in 1970) until British synth-pop duo Naked Eyes redid it in 1983, substituting roaring synthesizer for muted trumpet. That did the trick; their drum-heavy New Wave version reached No. 8 in June 1983, 20 years after the song’s composition.
Warwick never released her version as a single, but it did appear on her 1967 LP “The Windows of the World” and on several of her greatest hits albums.
The covers have kept on coming over the years. Perhaps none is more surprising than the one released in 2010 by Jim O’Rourke with vocals by Thurston Moore for O’Rourke’s tribute LP, “All Kinds of People ~ Love Burt Bacharach.” O’Rourke and Moore are better known as the bassist and singer-guitarist, respectively, for noise-rockers Sonic Youth.
