It's no match for Rhino's The Look of Love: The Burt Bacharach Collection, but Dutch reissue label Disky's Burt Bacharach's 60 Greatest Hit Songs, also a three-CD box set, makes a useful complement to that definitive compilation. Disky has licensed most of this album's contents from EMI and taken a European slant, so that, for example, Bacharach's first hit as a songwriter, "The Story of My Life," which leads off, is the cover by Michael Holliday that topped the U.K. charts, not the recording by Marty Robbins that made the ...
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It's no match for Rhino's The Look of Love: The Burt Bacharach Collection, but Dutch reissue label Disky's Burt Bacharach's 60 Greatest Hit Songs, also a three-CD box set, makes a useful complement to that definitive compilation. Disky has licensed most of this album's contents from EMI and taken a European slant, so that, for example, Bacharach's first hit as a songwriter, "The Story of My Life," which leads off, is the cover by Michael Holliday that topped the U.K. charts, not the recording by Marty Robbins that made the U.S. Top 20. Sixteen of the tracks are the biggest American hit versions of the songs, including B.J. Thomas' chart-topping "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," but in another eight cases, the biggest British hit is the one used, such as Sandie Shaw's number one recording of "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me" and Cilla Black's of "Anyone Who Had a Heart." Sixteen tracks in the collection are non-hit versions of songs that were U.S. hits, many of them for Bacharach favorite Dionne Warwick, whose absence is striking. (Included in this category is Tom Jones' 1977 re-recording of his 1965 hit "What's New Pussycat?") The remaining 19 songs were not hits at all, which makes their inclusion on an album with the words "Greatest Hit Songs" in the title curious, especially when such Bacharach hits as "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?," "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)," and "That's What Friends Are For" are missing. But these are some of the most interesting inclusions, songs that have Bacharach's patented style but are nevertheless unfamiliar. Two songs recorded by the Searchers and a collaboration between the Hollies and Peter Sellers on the movie theme "After the Fox" are standouts, but many of these lost songs are excellent. ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi
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