Classic Song Chronicles: Burt Bacharach and Hal David's "This Guy's in Love with You"

***A new series designed to pay tribute to some of my all time favorite songs***



Burt Bacharach was nearing the end of an astonishing decade of writing some of the greatest songs of the twentieth century when his haunting "This Guy's In Love with You" first appeared in 1968. Featuring lyrics by the incomparable Hal David, "This Guy's In Love with You" first came into prominence when A&M founder and popular band leader Herb Alpert recorded a version for a television special.



Bacharach biographer Serene Dominic notes though in his extraordinary Song By Song that the song was probably written for Dusty Springfield as "This Girl's In Love with You". Dusty's lovely original version appeared on her great Dusty Definitely (a title that will come into play a bit later) but it was Alpert who scored the first hit with it.



Lyrically striking and yet deceptively simple, "This Guy's in Love with You" is one of Bacharach's most remarkably versatile songs and it has been adapted as everything from a syrupy ballad to an stone cold soul classic to a free jazz workout.
Shortly after Alpert's striking version became a smash hit, it seemed that nearly everyone was having a go at it, including Dionne Warwick who scored a top ten hit with it in 69.



Covered hundreds of times by artists all over the world, the song has somehow never outstayed its welcome and it remains as fresh and as powerful as the day that Bacharach first sketched it out in the mid sixties. One of the song's biggest fans is powerhouse songwriter Noel Gallagher, who has gone on record as calling it "the greatest love song ever written." Perhaps even more to the point, the first Oasis album's title Definitely Maybe harkens directly back to that original Dusty Springfield album that the song was first written for. Gallagher would get the chance to perform the song with Bacharach himself in the mid nineties and it has since become a staple of his solo acoustic sets.



Gallagher, who placed a photo of Bacharach in plain view on the cover of that 1st Oasis album, has never shied away from his love for the iconic songwriter and Oasis' gorgeous "Half a World Away" owes not just a little to "The Guy's in Love with You."



My personal favorite versions of the song are sadly not available on YouTube. Petula Clark recorded a soaring version that just melts me every time I hear it and the always undervalued BJ Thomas delivered a stunning take on one of his sadly out of print late sixties LPs.
A couple of key versions thankfully preserved on YouTube are two soul versions courtesy of Aretha Franklin and Jimmy Ruffin:





A terrific live Jazz version by Ella Fitzgerald has to be highlighted as well:



As does this eerie and near whispered Johnny Mathis take:



Finally, for a little international flavor, here is German artist Hildegard Knef delivering her version of this song:



Picking a favorite Burt Bacharach song is a bit impossible as there are just so many masterpieces to choose from but "This Guy's in Love with You" would place near the top of my list.



Its remarkable staying power and the fact that it has been recorded by such a diverse group of singers in a number of incredibly different styles makes it an ideal first choice for this new series.

Notes on the Decade's Greatest Albums: A Girl Called Eddy

Recorded at Sheffield’s Yellow Arch Studios in the early part of 2004, the self titled album from a A Girl Called Eddy is one of the great under the radar LPs of the decade, and stands as one of the best debut records in recent memory. The brainchild of New Jersey born singer-songwriter Erin Moran, the achingly triumphant A Girl Called Eddy recalls the best of Bacharach and David while successfully alluding to everyone from The Carpenters to My Bloody Valentine.

Released on the independent label Anti Records, an offshoot of Epitaph, in August of 2004, the meticulously moody and at times miraculous A Girl Called Eddy is made up of eleven masterful compositions all from the pen of Moran. Essaying heartbreak, loneliness, frustration and finally redemption, Moran and producers Richard Hawley (Pulp’s brilliant guitarist) and Colin Elliot’s collaboration is simply put the Dusty in Memphis for this decade but for some reason the album, despite no small amount of acclaim, failed to catch on in the fall of 2004, and Moran’s project remains sadly unknown by the majority of modern music fans.

Armed with kudos from everyone from Robert Smith of The Cure to Nina Persson of The Cardigans (not to mention Burt Bacharach himself), as well as four and five star reviews from nearly every British music publication that reviewed it in 2004, A Girl Called Eddy should have fit nicely among the big selling sixties pop revivalists who have carved such a niche for themselves this decade, but Erin Moran’s charms perhaps proved a bit too subtle for most modern music fans.



Opening with the gorgeous and heartbreaking “Tears All Over Town”, a song worthy of the best Brill Building classics you care to name, A Girl Called Eddy never makes a wrong move in it’s classic L.P. running time. “Tears All Over Town” sets the tone for the rest of the album perfectly, with Moran’s unforgettable vocals being balanced perfectly with Hawley and Elliot’s wonderfully effective production and side playing. The song, climaxing with the slyly bruising, “I know that I loved you, but I loved you in vain.”, is a classic opening and the perfect introduction to Moran’s musical landscape. It is no coincidence that it was this song that introduced A Girl Called Eddy to the music community (Moran had previously only played and sang background briefly for Francis Dunnery) when it was released as the title track on a 2001 E.P.



“Kathleen”, the first of half a dozen tracks offering up an exquisite string backing, reminds me a bit of one of Francoise Hardy’s startling creations from her early seventies period. Thoughtfully morose and slyly provocative, “Kathleen” is a masterfully moody track punctuated by a distant horn in the background and Hawley and Elliot’s wonderfully skilled and inventive production chops.



The lyrically striking “Girls Can Really Tear You Up Inside” recalls the savageness of Costello’s Imperial Bedroom period, and it’s relatively relaxed musical backing gives it an added layer of subtext and emotion…like a Sunday walk in the park with your lover just before you break their heart. The strings are again used incredibly well and Colin Elliot’s late use of the mellotron is just lovely.



The title of “The Long Goodbye” will no doubt bring a smile to both literature and film fans, but instead of a moody film noir sound, the track proves to be one of the noisiest on the album, recalling the shoegaze glory of both My Bloody Valentine and Lush. The Beach Boys like harmonizing offers up a perfect counterpoint to Hawley’s tough and at times savage electric guitar fills. The song also includes one of Moran’s best lyrical moments on the album with the great, “Take your records, leave me mine. You’re the one who said we lived it all on borrowed time.”



After the quiet and at times chilling “Somebody Hurt You”, the album’s longest and perhaps most stunning moment follows with the jaw dropping “People Used to Dream About the Future”, one of the great songs of the decade. Here Moran’s voice shows surprising explosiveness, with the stunning mid song question of “Where did it all go?” offering up the kind of go for broke moment young artists rarely have the skills to achieve. Recalling Karen Carpenter in her prime (with a nice nod to vintage Streisand as well) Moran’s vocal work on “People Used to Dream About the Future” is simply stunning, and the soaring string section is wonderfully orchestrated. It’s the kind of perfectly crafted pop song that artists sadly just don’t attempt anymore.



Opening with a snippet of Bacharach’s “Close to You” on Moran’s piano, “Heartache” is one of the most minimal tracks on the record, with Elliot particularly shining on vibes. “Heartache” is lovely stuff and probably could have been some sort of torch song standard had it been written forty or fifty years ago.



Sounding like a German Cabaret number played by The Bee-Gees circa Odessa, the eerie and oddly majestic “Life Thru The Same Lens” is the album’s strangest creation. It’s also one of the best, with Andy Cook’s drums providing a solid backing to one of Moran’s most off-kilter compositions. Moran’s own backing vocal flourishes are particularly well placed, and Simon Stafford’s closing horn playing is perfectly fitting for such a strangely moving off the wall song.



Things get quiet again on “Did You See The Moon Tonight”, one of the album’s most mysterious sounding tracks. With a wide-awake narcotic feel punctuated by Hawley's wonderfully dreamy Hawaiian Steel guitar playing and Moran's drenched in echo vocals, "Did You See The Moon Tonight" is simply mesmerizing.



“Little Bird” seemingly offers up a hope of escape from the heartbreak and isolation Moran has been essaying on the album’s first ten tracks, but lines like “I am trapped under the sea trying to understand what life wants me to be” shows that Moran will probably never run in any kind of top forty crowd. The song also contains one of the album’s most outward tributes, with the Brian Wilson nod, “Heroes and villains and old lovers walk by, they tip their hats but they never answer why.”



A Girl Called Eddy’s final track is its most hopeful. Clocking in at a near epic six minutes, “Golden” finds Moran reminding herself that she doesn’t “need to die just to see” that life is already quiet wonderful. Alternating between near silence and the band playing at full force with Hawley’s shimmering electric guitar out front, the song is an ambitious and masterful closing to an equally ambitious and masterful debut LP.

The album would be greeted by universal acclaim when it was released in Britain in 2004. Mojo’s four star review called Moran a remarkable songwriter and noted that the entire album was “steeped in 60s classicism.” Q applauded Moran’s “sweetly painful love songs” in their four-star review and Uncut noted that Moran exhibited “gorgeously gauged soul and shrewdness” in her singing and writing. The album was mostly ignored in its stateside release though and was unfairly lost in the shuffle, the fate of many great albums from the past by uncompromising and individualistic artists.

A Girl Called Eddy is still thankfully in print and Moran is reportedly at work on the follow-up. Whether she can top her debut remains to be seen but I can’t wait to listen to what she delivers next. In the meantime, search out the sublime and moving A Girl Called Eddy. Once heard, its best moments will rarely leave your waking thoughts and Moran’s voice will haunt your dreams.