Other quotations that might apply to BB?

[Rio]

"Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple." - Charles Mingus

[An Enormous BB Fan]

Friedrich Nietzsche said the following:

"Without music, life would be a mistake."

With your permission, I have to amend that quotation. For me, the following is 100% true:

"Without Burt Bacharach's music, life would be a mistake."

That's how much Burt's music means to me.

[Rio]

After reading about how Russell Davies appears to perceive Bacharach's work, I went to listen to the program and read about his past as a caricaturist.

All this reminded me of that aforism by Oscar Wilde:

"Caricature is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius."

In my judgement, it applies to those who label Burt's music as easy listening. Not that I think tht this is a decent caricature, mind you. In most cases I think it is a combination of large doses of mediocrity and ignorance -- together with some snobbery and jealousy for good measure.

[steveo_1965]

Those who think Burt's music is easy listening are, to repeat the word..
not "listening"........the whole appraoch to Burt's compositions, orchestrations and productions are dynamic and dramatic...never would we hear that in easy listening!

Steveo

[An Enormous BB Fan]

First of all, is the definition of "easy listening music" "bad music"? I find Burt's music very easy to listen to. The reason that some people call it "easy listening music" is simply because his songs are so popular that they have been covered by so many different artists with so many different orchestrations and his songs have been so ubiquitous over the years, and played in so many elevators [in watered-down orchestrations] and so many of his songs have become hard-wired into our brains, that these critics who call Burt's music "easy listening" may never have heard the original versions. Bert Kaempfert, for example, could turn any piece of music into "easy listening music". I think that it simply shows the critic's ignorance of Burt's originality and complexity when they label his music "easy listening music" -- even though his music is very easy to listen to. These same "critics" would probably put the most amateurishly composed music on a pedestal. If it's a great pop song, these "critics" simply label it as "easy listening". They plainly don't know what they're talking about.