The Burt Bacharach Discussion Forum

We're all familiar with 'Walk On By' as written by Kendall Hayes which was a hit in 1961 for Leroy Van Dyke, and 'I'll Never Fall In Love Again' written by Lonnie Donegan and Jimmy Currie with which Tom Jones charted in 1967, both titles for which Bacharach and David went on to write very different songs. However, with 'Blue On Blue' the order is reversed and more than sixty years after Bobby Vinton took their song to no.3 in the Billboard Hot 100 Nick Lowe has unveiled a self-penned song with the same title. It's taken from his just released album entitled 'Indoor Safari', his first collection of new songs for over a decade.

Paul,
Thanks, great song by Nick Lowe.

Here's another....


'blue'

......one more.



'blue'

Of all the titles featured or referenced so far I prefer the Bacharach song in every instance and although Nick Lowe's 'Blue On Blue' comes close his melody isn't quite as ingratiating as Burt's. Here's an example of the opposite being the case and I'm much better disposed towards 'That's What Friends Are For' co-written by Deniece Williams and a Top 10 hit for her in the UK in 1977 than I ever have been to the Bacharach and Bayer Sager song from the 80s, although that has more to do with Carole's lyrics than Burt's music.

'On My Own' from 'Les Misérables' may not be as familiar to us as the Bacharach/Bayer Sager song with the same title but I see that it has been recorded more than three times as much. The first recording by Frances Ruffelle was released just a matter of weeks before the record by Patti Labelle and Michael McDonald of the Bacharach tune first saw the light of day.

Interesting topic and a year before Bacharach and David's musical Promises, Promises opened on Broadway Lynn Anderson had a country hit in the US with a song by the same title, but that's where the similarities end.

It's a curious irony that the follow-up to the Naked Eyes hit cover of 'There's Always Something There To Remind Me' was called 'Promises, Promises' and it wasn't the Bacharach and David song. Suffice it to say that their self-penned number charted higher in the US in 1983 than Dionne's recording of the Bacharach & David song fourteen years earlier.