The Songs Of Box Set

Scheduled for a March 3rd, 2023, release, "The Songs of Bacharach & Costello" celebrates a decades long creative partnership and friendship between Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello. Personally curated by Costello, the collection brings together all of the published songs the pair has written since their collaborations began in 1995. The history of their partnership is storied and quite detailed and summed up nicely below:

Those who were surprised by the writers of “I’m Not Angry” and “What’s New Pussycat?” working together perhaps overlooked that Bacharach was engaging in musical collaboration for only the 2nd time in his storied career, the 1st resulting in just a handful of songs musically written with Neil Diamond.

It was Costello who wrote the 1st musical draft of “God Give Me Strength”, communicating from Dublin to Los Angeles by fax, back in the 20th century, and far from being offended by this presumption, Bacharach sent back an amended copy, laying out the signature intro motif for flugelhorn, adding the expansive bridge section and making all sorts of subtle, but crucial amendments to the melodic and rhythmic phrasing of Costello’s 1st draft.

This song was a commission for the Allison Anders’ motion picture “Grace Of My Heart”, and though both song and movie were overlooked by the Oscars, the song did place in the Grammy nominations of the following year, as Costello remarked in his book “Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink”. “To have written a song like 'God Give Me Strength' and simply stopped would have been ridiculous”.

So began a series of face to face songwriting sessions in both California and New York City. Their working methods ranged from one writer responding to the other’s opening musical statement to Costello trying to put lyrical substance and definition to a complete Bacharach composition that did not need any such musical reply. By the end of their initial sessions, there were occasions when they were seated across the room at 2 pianos, writing successive bars of the new tune.

Recorded in Hollywood in 1998, the album, "Painted From Memory", orchestrated by Bacharach with the exception of the title track which was arranged by the great Johnny Mandel, has gone on to capture an appreciative worldwide audience far beyond its initial release. The song “I Still Have That Other Girl” even managed to wrestle a Grammy away from both Celine Dion and Van Morrison, no easy task in the crowded field of the 'Best Collaboration With Vocals' category of the 41st awards.

The idea that the songs and lovelorn themes of "Painted From Memory" might be realized on the Broadway stage were perhaps an unlikely prospect, given that, as Costello puts it in his essay, such a show might feel “like Eugene O’Neill’s 'Long Day’s Journey Into Night' only with less tap dancing”.

Nevertheless, this was the belief of dedicated "Painted From Memory" aficionado and television comedy mogul, Chuck Lorre, who together with Tony Award winning writer, Steven Sater, set about threading a story through the original folio of songs, creating a tale and set of characters who demanded that Bacharach and Costello write more than a dozen additional songs.

Writing the lyrics of these new songs, Costello told us “these reflect the stories and impulses of a group of people who are, obsessive and vain, who are betrayed and become disappointed in life, but long tenderly for a happier time, who are unfaithful, dishonest, destructive and turn out to be the inventors of a dangerous past, who are guilty, haunted and romantically deluded, desperate, vengeful and even cruel. In their musical form they are different kinds of dark love songs that anyone might sing if they happened to be an artist, his model, a wife, a fantasist, a lover, a philanderer or disillusioned daughter. You know, fun for all the family”.