You say I took the name in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well, really, what’s it to ya?
There’s a blaze of light in every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

–Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah”
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My favorite verse.

“There’s a blaze of light in every word.”

There is.

What do you get when you kiss a guy?
You get enough germs to catch pneumonia
After you do, he’ll never phone ya
I’ll never fall in love again

–Dionne Warwick, “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdBwYKBcUWY

Lou Reed used the title “Anyone Who Had a Heart” as a line in the iconic Velvet Underground song, “Sweet Jane.” Fanatic that I am, I looked up the Bachrach/Warwick song and discovered Wiki had cited it as the first use of polyrhythms in American pop.

Wiki has since removed that claim, but still provides a description of the song’s rhythmic complexity:
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“Anyone Who Had a Heart” was presented to Dionne Warwick in unfinished form while she, Burt Bacharach and Hal David were rehearsing in Bacharach’s Manhattan apartment for an upcoming recording session. Bacharach had finished the score which, in his words, “changes time signature constantly, 4/4 to 5/4, and a 7/8 bar at the end of the song on the turnaround. It wasn’t intentional, it was all just natural. That’s the way I felt it.” David had written only about a third of the lyric and was reluctant to finalize the sixth line of the first stanza as “And know I dream of you”, feeling the stress was unnatural (as opposed to “And know I dream of you”). Bacharach played a snippet of the tune for Warwick, who was enraptured and at her urging David left Warwick to rehearse with Bacharach in the living room while he (David) retired to a bedroom where he completed the lyric.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anyone_Who_Had_a_Heart_(song)

–Dionne Warwick, “Anyone Who Had A Heart” (1964)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMsiGMKHJ8k
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Warwick nailed it in one take.

I didn’t realize that Bachrach had written that song. Bachrach wrote at least another Gene Pitney hit- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. Gene Pitney grew up not far from my hometown.

My favorite Bachrach? Maybe Alfie.

When I saw that video of Dionne Warwick singing Walk on By, I was reminded of another song titled Walk on By, but this time Kendall Hayes was the songwriter and Leroy Van Dyke was the singer. I bought a whole bunch of albums from Record Club of America from money earned by working the counter at the local hippie hangout/greasy spoon. One of the albums-Mercury Country Hits or something like that- had Walk on By. The album is long gone, but I recall at least another song from it- Ring of Fire. Among the other albums I purchased in that haul were Casals conducting Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos (still the best interpretation I have heard, IMHO.) and a Gabor Szabo jazz album.

Interesting that Mike K met Bachrach.

https://youtu.be/A3t1qUMvY7g