"I Say a Little Prayer" - The enduring magic of Hollywood's greatest songwriters, Burt Bacharach and Hal David

A hit song served up fast and then funny by Dionne Warwick (1967), Aretha Franklin (1968), My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), Glee (2009), and Sing 2 (2021)

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Today is more of a pop music article. Later this week it’s back to rock music. Enjoy.

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Our song of the day

If you want songwriting magic, take a look at what the partnership of composer Burt Bacharach and lyricist Hal David conjured up — and this is just a tiny part:

• “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” — written for the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid — B.J. Thomas version #1 in US

• “What’s New Pussycat?” — written for the film — Tom Jones #3 in US

• “Walk On By” — Dionne Warwick #6 in US — also done by Isaac Hayes, Gloria Gaynor, The Stranglers, Average White Band, D Train, Dina Carroll, Sybil, Gabrielle, and Melissa Manchester

• “The Look of Love” — Sergio Mendes #4 in US — also done by Gladys Knight & the Pips, Dusty Springfield, Diana Krall, Isaac Hayes, T-empo

• “This Guy’s in Love with You” — Herb Alpert #1 in US, #3 in UK

• “One Less Bell to Answer” — The Fifth Dimension #2 in US

Their partnership lasted almost two decades — from 1956 to 1973 — and although both would work with other partners throughout their careers, it was with one another that the stars appeared to become perfectly aligned. Together they penned over 230 songs for the record industry, movies, TV, and Broadway, and were nominated for multiple Academy Awards, Golden Globes, and Grammies, as well as a Tony Award for Best Musical.

They took home an Academy Award for Best Original Song (for “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head”) and a Grammy Award for Best Score (for their Broadway musical Promises, Promises). As a duo they are ranked an astounding number 32 on Rolling Stone’s 2015 list of The 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time, and were the first songwriting team to be awarded the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song by the Library of Congress, in 2012.

What brought this magic about? I have my own opinion as a longtime fan of their music, plus I have experience trying to learn their song “Walk on By” as a member of my high school chorus. Our conductor, Mr. Stewart, got noticeably frustrated with us as we tried and failed, again and again, to nail the tempo of that song. I also had the pleasure in the early 1990s, in Honolulu of all places, of seeing Burt Bacharach in concert on a bizarre double bill with choreographer Tommy Tune. Burt performed and gave commentary on many of his best-known tunes, and it struck me listening to one tune after another how different his songs have always sounded in comparison to everything else on the charts.

Based on those experiences, here’s what I suspect makes this songwriting duo so distinctive. As a lyricist, Hal David was to Burt Bacharach what Bernie Taupin has been to Elton John — someone who could accommodate any wild change in tempo or chord progression with evocative lyrics that told a heart-grabbing story. Burt’s music took us on an emotional journey and Hal’s lyrics told us why we were feeling that way. Burt riled us up and Hal calmed us back down so we could go on with our lives. In other words, Hal was the cool head both expressing and reigning in Burt’s tempestuous heart. And we loved every single moment of that emotional roller coaster ride that Burt was sending us on because we knew that, by the end, Hal would deliver us back to the place where we got on, shaky on our feet but thrilled by the experience we’d just had.

Maybe I’m wrong, but as a psychologist that’s how I would explain the magic. That’s why Burt and Hal were the ideal songwriting match, and why they would produce hits for many singers in the late 50s and early 60s — including Marty Robbins, Perry Como, and Gene Pitney — and why starting in 1962, and throughout the rest of their partnership, they would generate one hit after another inspired by, and in collaboration with, the songstress who was their perfect muse. Miss Dionne Warwick.

Burt discovered her in a recording session with the Drifters, and even as a backup singer she captured his attention with her signature voice and her dynamic presence. She already had many years of experience performing as a gospel singer and as a member of the Gospelaires (renamed the Sweet Inspirations), a group that sang backup on many studio recordings, as well as having received formal training at the Hartt College of Music. Using Dionne to make song demos, he found that he could throw anything at her and, not only could she accommodate it, but she would also make it into something extraordinary.

She was only 21 when she signed with Burt and Hal’s production company and recorded her first song with them. That debut song as a solo artist, “Don’t Make Me Over,” went all the way to #5 on the Billboard R&B chart and #20 on the Billboard Hot 100. Burt had finally found someone whose technical dexterity from her musical training and backup singing, combined with her emotional range from singing barn-raising and soul-stirring gospel, made her perfectly suited to handle the complexity and the emotional intensity of his songs. As he exclaimed in a Time interview, “What emotion I could get away with!”

Among her hits with Burt and Hal were “Anyone Who Had a Heart”, “Walk on By,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” and “Promises Promises.” But my own personal favorite is “I Say a Little Prayer,” the focus of this post.

In yet another example of the stars aligning or the gods intervening (as I have found in so many of these stories), this song almost didn’t see the light of day. Recorded in April 1966, Burt was not satisfied with the tempo after making Dionne do ten takes and refused to release it as a single. It was only added to Dionne’s The Windows of the World album at the insistence of Florence Greenberg, President of Scepter Records. Following the album’s release in September 1967, the song became a DJ favorite and Scepter rushed out a single to capitalize on its popularity. By December the song had reached #4 on the Billboard Hot 100, #8 on the Billboard R&B chart, #4 on the Canadian chart, and #3 on the Record World Top 100 chart. In January it was certified gold.

Let’s hear Dionne perform “I Say a Little Prayer” on The Ed Sullivan Show in January 1968, where you can see her effortless performance of this complex song with its odd time signatures, and also hear the emotional longing and even pathos she imbues into a seemingly upbeat tune:

One measure of a great song is that another artist can take that song, give it a completely different interpretation or put a radically new spin on it, and deliver something equally brilliant. (We might even say that generating such a song, time after time, is the hallmark of a master songwriter.) Let’s look at four examples of how that was done with this song, starting with the incomparable Aretha Franklin.

Although Aretha wrote some of her own material, producer Clyde Otis noted that she “had a thing for covers…as an interpreter, she always felt she could outdo the original” (as quoted in the biography Respect, by David Ritz). He had warned her off doing Burt’s melodies because they worked well with Dionne’s softer, subtler approach, but “you’re too strong for his stuff.” Her producer at the time of the recording, Jerry Wexler, also advised her not to do “I Say a Little Prayer” for a similar reason, that the melody “was peculiarly suited to a lithe instrument like Dionne Warwick’s—a light voice without the dark corners or emotional depths that defined Aretha.” He also considered it “not smart business” to record a song only 12 weeks after the original hit the top of the charts. Wait at least eight months to a year, he told her.

Aretha ignored this advice, having already come up with her own interpretation and arrangement of the song involving a new groove for the Muscle Shoals rhythm section and a new backup vocal arrangement for the Sweet Inspirations. When Jerry listened to the recording (produced by engineer Tom Dowd), he thought “she blew the fuckin’ doors off the song…turning what had been delightful fluff into something serious, obsessive, and haunting,” but he still didn’t think it was going to be a hit.

As he admitted, he was completely wrong. As a B side (not even an A side!), Aretha’s version went gold, reaching #3 on the R&B singles chart and #10 on the Hot 100. In music weekly NME’s list of the top 150 singles of all time, as ranked by music critics in 1987, it was at the very top — #1! — and in Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2021, it was ranked 117. Not bad for a cover following right on the heels of an original hit!

Undoubtedly the most significant stamp of approval came from Burt Bacharach (quoted in Ritz’s Respect), who said “‘As much as I like the original recording by Dionne…there’s no doubt that Aretha’s is a better record. She imbued the song with heavy soul and took it to a far deeper place. Hers is the definitive version.’”

There are two things I personally love about Aretha’s re-interpretation: the change in chords that, for me, makes it almost a “you must love me too” anthem, and the jolt you get when you think the song is ending and then she comes back even stronger and more insistent. Take a listen and see what you think:

Now we turn to a version I must extol for its humor and sheer inventiveness, and for the way it shows how a great song can be adapted to fit voices and situations the songwriters never in a million years could have predicted. Sung by a table and then a restaurant full of people, enjoy this wacky version from the 1997 romantic comedy film My Best Friend’s Wedding, starring Julia Roberts, Dermot Mulroney, Cameron Diaz, and Rupert Everett (as well as many wonderful comedy actors, whose faces you may recognize). Also note the funny name of the restaurant on the wall sign near the end of the clip:

Not to be outdone by its cinematic cousin, the television show Glee did their own version of “I Say a Little Prayer.” Pivoting from wacky to Machiavellian, we get to see a devious and cunning cheerleader and her posse use the song to send a message that “this man is mine so keep your hands off him, [expletive deleted here].” I’ve left in some footage of their scheming afterwards with cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester, played by the deliciously funny Jane Lynch:

And last but not least, a version I hadn’t seen before but just discovered in the researching of this post, from the animated musical comedy film Sing 2. In fact, I ended up watching both Sing and Sing 2, I was so taken with this version. Why are some of the cleverest and most enjoyable films these days animated movies for kids starring animals? I loved both films!

In this scene, we see the song used in yet another radically different way — as a joyful and uplifting declaration of love. The characters singing are two elephants named Meena and Alfonso, voiced/sung by Tori Kelly and Pharrell Williams. Enjoy this version — it’s just so good:

Of course the aging rock star is a lion!

Some fun facts

• Hal David’s lyrics for the song were reportedly meant to be a woman singing about/to her man serving in the Vietnam War. (I haven’t confirmed this.)

• Aretha covered several other Bacharach and David songs recorded by Dionne Warwick, including “Walk On By” (listen here), “This Girl’s in Love with You” (listen here), “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart” (listen here), and “You’ll Never Get to Heaven” (listen here).

• Covers of “I Say a Little Prayer” by other artists include: a reggae version by Jamaican artist Diana King included in the soundtrack for My Best Friend’s Wedding (here), a country and western medley of “I Say a Little Prayer” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” by Anne Murray and Glen Campbell (here), an instrumental version by Brazilian bossa nova/jazz/funk musician Sergio Mendes (here), and a marimba version by Julius Wechter and the Baja Marimba Band (here).

• Songwriter Jay Asher, who’s written for such artists as Whitney Houston, Donna Summer, and Julio Iglesias, has always revered Bacharach and David. For a lovely homage by Jay to his musical idols, I recommend this post on Brad Kyle’s music substack.

• The four key cast members of My Best Friend’s Wedding — Julia Roberts, Dermot Mulroney, Cameron Diaz, and Rupert Everett — talk about the filming of the restaurant scene for People TV in this 2019 video clip. The cast had no clue about many elements of that scene until they happened. As Dermot said, it was “unspooling beneath our feet.” The full People TV video with the cast here is also a fun watch, especially when Julia feels compelled to defend her character who does her darnedest to sabotage the wedding.

Questions for discussion in the comments

• How big is your prayer? Is it little, medium-sized, or supersized?

• If you could be any animal, which would you be? And what would you wear?

• This may seem like it’s the same question, but it’s not. If an animal played you in an animated musical comedy film, what animal would it be? (Be honest. It’s OK if you’re the human version of a warthog or cockroach. Kind of.)

• What is the worst or most embarrassing thing you’ve done at a wedding? Describe in exquisite detail.

• If you came back in another life, would you like to reincarnate as a cheerleader, an elephant named Alfonso, a devious and ruthless coach named Sue, or Rupert Everett?