It is the death of a prolific American songwriter. Burt Bacharach was 94 years old. He is responsible for some of the greatest hits in popular music of the second half of the 20th century.
With our correspondent in Washington, Guillaume Naudin
It is an association that has become totally iconic. The image is that of Paul Newman transporting Claudia Cardinale on a bicycle. The soundtrack is the song “Raindrops keep falling on my head”, written for the movie “Butch Cassidy and the Kid”. It’s 1969 and Burt Bacharach triumphs at the Oscars and Grammy Awards with this soundtrack, performed by BJ Thomas.
Because it is most often through others that Burt Bacharach has known success. In the United States, his collaboration with Dionne Warwick was very productive, but others like Barbra Streisand and Aretha Franklin were not mistaken there either.
The king of “Easy listening”
In Europe, the great white voice of soul, Dusty Springfield, also sang Burt Bacharach, like the Welshman Tom Jones or even the French Sacha Distel and Mireille Matthieu.
Burt Bacharach had returned to grace with the tributes of many pop singers from the end of the last century. He was the king of a genre somewhat contemptuously called “Easy Listening”. Easy to listen to, perhaps, but probably not so easy to manufacture. The singers knew it. It is estimated that they are more than a thousand around the world to have interpreted Burt Bacharach.