The 25 Days of Christmas: Day 22

Entering the world of showtunes.

As I’m writing this, the tributes to Andre Braugher are all over social media. Before him it was Ryan O’Neal, before him Norman Lear, Sandra Day O’Connor, Shane MacGowan, Henry Kisinger, Willie Hernández, Janet Landgard, and so on and so on, forever.

Now and then, a celebrity’s death will break out of the noise and hit home. Prince, as noted, was one such. Burt Bacharach’s passing in February of this year was another. I’ve been listening to his music more than usual this year (and going pretzel-fingered trying to play his bonkers jazz chords on the guitar) and am even more in awe of his songwriting—and his prolificacy—than ever. Here is a partial list of hit songs he wrote or co-wrote, many of which I had no idea were his until now:

• Alfie

• Any Day Now

• Always Something There to Remind Me

• Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)

• Baby It's You

• The Blob by The Five Blobs (the theme from The Blob starring Steve McQueen)

• Close to You

• Do You Know the Way to San Jose

• Heartlight (the E.T.-themed Neil Diamond song)

• I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself (White Stripes version is required listening)

• I Say a Little Prayer

• I'll Never Fall in Love Again

• My Little Red Book

• The Look of Love

• On My Own

• Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head

• That's What Friends Are For

• This Guy's in Love with You

• Trains and Boats and Planes

• Wishin' and Hopin'

• Walk On By

• What the World Needs Now Is Love

• What's New Pussycat

I’ll bet you were surprised at least once in that list.

I’ve come to realize that his gift for creating melodies, particularly those that take their time achieving resolution, has done a lot to inform my opinion of what constitutes “good music.” Something in his music always felt very grown-up somehow, though I may have absorbed that notion because his heyday coincided with my childhood.

He was active up to the end. In 2021 he and Steven Sater premiered Some Lovers, Bacharach’s first musical since Promises, Promises in 1968. Today’s song is “This Christmas,” the closing number from that show.

Unfortunately the song isn’t available in an embeddable format. Here are two ways to listen:

• Spotify (requires free or paid account)

• Apple Music (requires account)

It’s a beautiful number, one that still has the “Bacharach sound,” with lyrics that remind us of the transience/timelessness of the season, of music, and of love.

The frost has its day on the wind
Then blows away again
But the songs
That our hearts have sung
They're never gone — they're ours forever

Notes:

• The female voice on the song is Auli’i Cravalho, known to Disney fans (and parents of Disney fans) as the voice of Moana.

• Opening Spotify and putting all of Burt Bacharach on shuffle will turn up some startling gems like “I Still Have That Other Girl,” from his collaboration with Elvis Costello.

• After I finished writing this entry, I turned on Seeburg1000.com for some easy listening while I got some work done. This marvelous site has digitized thousands of old records from the Seeburg 1000 jukebox, which were played as “background music” in stores and workplaces nationwide from the 1950s through the ‘80s. The music is entirely instrumental versions of popular songs, designed to be pleasant and unobtrusive—literal elevator music—and the site has an online “radio station” that is marvelous for getting work done. As soon as I turned it on, an instrumental version of “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” began playing. Bacharach is everywhere.