Burt Bacharach is an American composer, songwriter and pianist, who has composed and wrote a staggering amount of songs in his time. He is 92 years old (as of 2021) and is still present in the music industry today. His most recent work was in July of 2020, helping to write Daniel Tashian’s EP. Bacharach is known for his unique chord progressions that move away from the conventional I, IV, V, vi and instead, use more interesting and strange movements. He also likes to write using odd time signatures and interesting rhythms and phrasing. He wrote the score for popular Broadway musical ‘Promises, Promises’ in 1968; it won 2 Oscars. He has written for many additional influential artists like Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones and Bobbie Gentry, overall accumulating 52 UK top 40 hits. He has won six Grammy’s and three Academy Awards in total, one of which being for co-writing ‘Raindrops keep falling on my head’.
I’ll Never Fall In Love Again
I’ll Never Fall In Love Again was a very popular song he wrote for the musical ‘Promises, Promises’. In 1969, Dionne Warwick released the most popular version of the song; this version got it to number six on the Billboard Top 100 and spent four weeks there. Bobby Gentry released another version which proved very popular in the UK. In this song analysis, I will be analysing the original song by Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello.
The song is about someone going through a heartbreak. The heartbreak was so bad in fact, that they state they never will love again, hence the name ‘I’ll Never Fall In Love Again’. The lyric ‘She’ll never phone you’ suggests a love that isn’t very personal, and the two don’t talk enough for it to be a working relationship. Even though the heartbreak was bad, it suggests that they are relieved to be not in that relationship anymore, but it leaves ‘a heart that’s shattered’.
The song’s instrumentation consists of piano, strings, brass, drums, vocals, percussion and acoustic guitar. All of these different instruments give it a thick texture through the whole song, but the instruments are playing in articulations that give it a soft phrasing; the vocals sing swells and the strings are playing arco, and the brass gives the song a warm tone. There are not many harmonies that stand out, but the piano and strings harmonise well with each other in the verses and outro.
The rhythms in this song are interesting, especially from the drums and percussion. In the verses and outro, the shaker is playing quavers with the click landing on the fourth beat of every bar, instead of two and four. However, in the chorus, it goes to the normal two and four rhythm when the ride cymbal comes in. The strings are just playing whole notes, making the strings swell and the song flows well because of this.
The overall structure of the song is Intro, verse*2, chorus, verse, chorus (including brass solo in the first half), verse, outro. The outro eventually fades out to end the song, which is a popular production trick that works well for ending songs. In this case, it sounds great, especially if it was in the context of being in a musical. The structure is quite unusual as it finishes with a verse before the outro, and there are two verse parts before the first chorus instead of one. The song’s tempo is 118 BPM and the time signature is in 4/4. The tempo can be described as allegro moderato; cheerful sounding and a little faster than average.
The song is in the key of F major. The chord sequences for this song are hard to track because they are constantly changing and going to places you wouldn’t expect, however, Bacharach seems to make this work. The chord sequence for the verses goes V, vi, IV, V, which uses the normal chords for many songs, however, it then moves to chord iii, which is very uncommon in progressions, and then carries on using interesting chords and chord variations like the D7 chord, until it resolves using a perfect cadence. The chorus (in this order) is chord I, ii, I, ii, iii, ii (but this chord is changed to a major!) then a chord V, si it resolves to chord I again for the verse.