Hal David

When you're part of a songwriting team, you write lyrics, and your partner happens to be a genius like Burt Bacharach, there's a good chance that you're going to have to fight to get your due.  So I'd like to give Hal David, who passed away on September 1, his due.  In fact, I'd go so far as to argue that David's lyrics to the great pop songs that the two wrote together in the 1960s (there were others after that, but let's not kid ourselves - nothing that approached the brilliance of those 60s hits, primarily for Dionne Warwick).

I've always thought that Bacharach/David songs were cinematic, and that David's lyrics - the screenplay, if you will - were just as important to the success of those songs as the direction contributed by Bacharach.  And for Dionne Warwick, the two created a body of work that will be remembered for as long as people are listening to great songs.  And the stories told by those songs were not always the happiest ones.  To wit:

Don't make me over
Now that I'd do anything for you
Don't make me over
Now that you know how I adore you

Don't pick on the things I say, the things I do
Just love me with all my faults, that way that I love you
I'm begging you

Don't make me over
Now that I can't make it without you
Don't make me over
I wouldn't change one thing about you

Just take me inside your arms and hold me tight
And always be by my side, if I am wrong or right
I'm begging you

"Don't Make Me Over"

If you see me walkin' down the street  
And I start to cry each time we meet 
Walk on by, walk on by
 
Make believe that you don't see the tears 
 Just let me grieve in private 'cause each time I see  
I break down and cry, I cry
 
Walk on by, don't stop  
Walk on by, don't stop  
Walk on by

"Walk On By"

Anyone who ever loved could look at me
And know that I love you
Anyone who ever dreamed could look at me
and know I dream of you
Knowing I love you so

Anyone who had a heart
Would take me in his arms and love me, too
You couldn't really have a heart and hurt me,
Like you hurt me and be so untrue
What am I to do

Every time you go away, I always say
This time it's goodbye , dear
Loving you the way I do
I take you back, without you I'd die dear
Knowing I love you so

Anyone who had a heart
Would take me in his arms and love me, too
You couldn't really have a heart and hurt me,
Like you hurt me and be so untrue

What am I to do

"Anyone Who Had a Heart"
 
Burt Bacharach took those lyrics, and constructed music and arrangements around them that perfectly fit the tone of the words that David was writing.  But without the words, you don't have a song.

R.I.P.