Various Artists - Covered: Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Volume 5: 1981-2016

This is the last of five albums containing the best songs of Burt Bacharach and/or Hal David.

This one is very different from all the others. For starters, the Bacharach-David songwriting collaboration was effectively over. (They did write a couple of songs together in these later years, but none of them were hits and I didn't judge any of them good enough for inclusion.)

David was seven years older than Bacharach, and it seems he more or less retired from songwriting a lot earlier than Bacharach did. I believe only one new song here was co-written by David, without Bacharach. That's "To All the Girls I've Loved Before." This was a huge hit by Willie Nelson & Julio Iglesias in 1984. But in fact it was first done by Albert Hammond in 1975. That's another sign that David stopped being a songwriting force in the 1970s.

However, Bacharach had a career revival in the 1980s, and he's had some minor revivals since. (He's still alive at 91 years old as I write this. David died in 2012, also at 91 years old.) Bacharach found a new songwriting partner with lyricist Carole Bayer Sager, and had a few hits in the 1980s, but some of them were massive hits. For instance, "That's What Friends Are For" was the best selling song in 1986.

Unfortunately, Bacharach had hits in the "adult contemporary" and/or soul genres, and I have big issues with those genres after about 1980. I feel good songs were often ruined by too much use of synthesizers, drum machines, strings, and so on. The singing has been even worse. Whitney Houston and others became superstars in the 1980s with a showy style that I consider "oversinging."

So I've had to tread very carefully with this album to find cover versions that I actually enjoyed listening to. I've made some very unusual choices. For instance, I haven't included the big hit version of "That's What Friends Are For." Instead, I've gone for an acoustic version done decades later by a relatively obscure Dutch singer. I've used that same Dutch singer (Trijntje Oosterhuis) doing an acoustic version for another big hit, "On My Own," that I can't stand in its original version by Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald.

I've chosen to include the Naked Eyes 1982 version of "There's Always Something There to Remind Me" even though I included a different version on an earlier album in this series. That's because this is a drastically different arrangement, and I happen to like it a lot. It's the only song in this series that I've included twice.

A few of the other songs here were actually Bacharach-David hits back in the 1960s, except that the cover versions I liked best weren't recorded until this era. Those songs are: "In Between the Heartaches," "Paper Mache," and "Here I Am."

Bacharach had another popular revival from 1996 to 1998, when he found Elvis Costello as a new songwriting partner. They wrote the song "God Give Me Strength" together for a movie. They were so happy with that that they did an entire album together in 1998. "Toledo," This House Is Empty Now," and "Painted from Memory" were originally done for that album, though this version of "Painted from Memory" is from a different album.

In conclusion, if you enjoy the musical style of Bacharach-David's songs in the 1960s and are not a fan of production techniques for radio hits from the 1980s onwards, this album is for you. Bacharach especially did write a lot of great songs in his later years. It's just that most of them were ruined by bad production and performances. Hopefully, I managed to find enough gems so that this album is as strong as the others in this series.

01 Arthur's Theme [Best That You Can Do] (Christopher Cross)
02 In Between the Heartaches (Phyllis Hyman)
03 [There's] Always Something There to Remind Me (Naked Eyes)
04 To All the Girls I've Loved Before (Willie Nelson & Julio Iglesias)
05 God Give Me Strength (Kristen Vigard)
06 Toledo (Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach)
07 This House Is Empty Now (Elvis Costello with Burt Bacharach)
08 Painted from Memory (Bill Frisell & Elvis Costello with Cassandra Wilson)
09 Paper Mache (Rita Calypso)
10 That's What Friends Are For (Trijntje Oosterhuis)
11 Here I Am (Kat Gang)
12 On My Own (Trijntje Oosterhuis)
13 The Last One to Be Loved (Rumer)

https://www.imagenetz.de/eRo7k

I had a heck of a time finding any good color photos of Bacharach and David together when they were young, but there are tons of those when they were old, mostly from awards shows and tributes. Here's one from 2000.