[[quoteright:310:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/f4667dd2_4bcd_4fc5_a4df_b82da92630cb.jpeg]]
[[caption-width-right:310:"[[Film/AustinPowers Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Burt Bacharach!]]"]]

->''"It was a very defining moment when Music/MilesDavis said, 'Hey man, that song, “Alfie,” you wrote was a pretty good song.' I said, 'Jesus, if Miles Davis said it’s a good song, I must be doing okay.'"''

Burt Freeman Bacharach (May 12, 1928 – February 3, 2023) was an American composer, songwriter, and record producer who was considered one of the most influential and prolific pop songwriters of the late 20th century. His musical career spanned from the [[TheFifties 1950s]] to the [[TheNewTwenties 2020s]], but hit its peak during the [[TheSixties 1960s]] and his writing and producing partnership with the lyricist Hal David.

The son of ''Bert'' Bacharach, a well-known fashion writer, Burt was born in Kansas City and raised in New York City, but he graduated from [=McGill=] University in UsefulNotes/{{Montreal}}. After studying composition with the French classical composer Darius Milhaud, Bacharach started his music career as an employee of the likes of Music/VicDamone and Creator/MarleneDietrich. He met Hal David in NYC in 1957; the two had a career breakthrough after writing "The Story of My Life" for Music/MartyRobbins and "Magic Moments" for Music/PerryComo. Bacharach, usually with David as lyricist, went on to create multiple songs for artists like Music/GenePitney, Music/CillaBlack, Music/DustySpringfield, Music/TheCarpenters, and most notably Music/DionneWarwick. He also recorded his own music on occasion, though none made as big a splash as his collaborations.

His music also made it to stage, film, and TV, such as the song "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" for ''Film/ButchCassidyAndTheSundanceKid'' and the scores for ''Film/CasinoRoyale1967'' and ''Film/Arthur1981''. Along with David and producer David Merrick, he also wrote the musical ''Theatre/PromisesPromises''.

While he was classically trained, Bacharach also incorporated plenty of {{jazz}} into his music, which is occasionally characterized as "easy listening".

He also appeared AsHimself in various works like ''Film/AustinPowers'', ''Series/NipTuck'', and ''Series/TheNanny''.

He was married four times (to actresses Paula Stewart and Creator/AngieDickinson, lyricist Carole Bayer Sager, and ski instructor Jane Hansen) and had four children (a daughter with Dickinson, an adopted son with Sager, a son and daughter with Hansen). He published a candid memoir called ''Anyone Who Had a Heart'' in 2013, with much of it devoted to his relationship with his eldest daughter Nikki, who struggled with a serious case of UsefulNotes/AspergerSyndrome before taking her own life in 2007.

Bacharach died in his home of natural causes on February 8, 2023 at the age of 94.

----
!!Discography:

In addition to the hundreds of songs he wrote for other artists and several compilation rereleases, Bacharach's own discography includes:

[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:Albums]]
* ''Hit Maker!: Burt Bacharach plays the Burt Bacharach Hits''
* ''Burt Bacharach''
* ''Portrait in Music''
* ''Living Together''
* ''Futures''
* ''Woman''
* ''Blue Umbrella'' (5-Song EP with Daniel Tashian)
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film Scores]]
* ''Film/WhatsNewPussycat''
* ''Film/AfterTheFox''
* ''Film/ButchCassidyAndTheSundanceKid''
* ''Film/LostHorizon''
* ''Film/Arthur1981''
* ''Film/{{Night Shift|1982}}''
* ''Film/IsntSheGreat''
* ''Film/ABoyCalledPo''
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Theater]]
* ''Theatre/PromisesPromises''
* ''Theatre/SomeLovers'' (with Steven Sater)
* ''Theatre/TheBoyFromOz'' (additional music)
[[/folder]]

----
!!Tropes in his works:

* AllTakeAndNoGive: The theme from ''Film/{{Alfie}}'' has the lines (by Hal David) "What's it all about, when you sort it out, Alfie? Are we meant to take more than we give?" Depending on how it is performed, the song can be from the perspective of a character who is a Giver to Alfie's Taker, or, if sung from a narrative perspective instead of a character perspective, can be a comment on Alfie's Taker personality in general.
* AntiLoveSong: "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" (words by Hal David), in which the singer bemoans her own love life and warns other women off the topic.
* BreakupSong: "Always Something There to Remind Me" (words by Hal David), in which the singer can't stop seeing their ex-lover in the locations around them.
* CastingGag:
** His appearance in the Franchise/JamesBond parody ''Film/AustinPowers'', since he had scored the Bond parody adaptation ''Film/CasinoRoyale1967'' previously.
** A 2021 recording of the ''Some Lovers'' score reunites many pairs of performers who had been onstage together to play the main couple, such as Creator/ConradRicamora and Creator/AshleyPark (''Theatre/TheKingAndI''), Creator/JonathanGroff and Creator/LeaMichele (''Theatre/SpringAwakening''), and Creator/DerekKlena and Creator/ChristyAltomare (''Theatre/{{Anastasia}}'').
* ChristmasSongs: Not very many in his catalogue. The most notable one is the novelty tune "The Bell That Couldn't Jingle".
* CompilationRerelease: His music has been compiled new releases multiple times, such as ''The Look of Love: The Burt Bacharach Collection'' in 2001 and ''Magic Moments: The Definitive Burt Bacharach Collection'' in 2008.
* TheCoverChangesTheGender: The Bacharach-David song "Kentucky Bluebird (Take a Message to Martha)", first recorded by Lou Johnson, became "Message to Michael" when Music/DionneWarwick had a hit with it. They'd originally forbade her from doing the song, because they felt the storyline (about a small town narrator pining for TheOneWhoMadeItOut) made more sense being sung by a man, so she just recorded it without their involvement.
* CreatorCameo: His voice can be clearly heard among the "sha-la-la-la-la"s in "Baby It's You" by The Shirelles.
* DivorceInReno: "Mexican Divorce", first recorded by The Drifters, with lyrics by Bob Hilliard about a man who goes looking for his wife and finds her traveling to Juarez for a quickie divorce.
* DomesticAbuse:
** "Rain on Me", by Ashanti (Douglas), has her address the pains and challenges of facing, and then overcoming, an abusive relationship. The music video also combines this with DramaticThunder.
** The 1970 Music/DionneWarwick song "Check Out Time" is a first person account of a woman leaving an abusive relationship.
* DooWopProgression: "Magic Moments" has the I-vi-IV-V progression in its verses.
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: One of his first hits as a composer was the wacky theme song for ''[[Film/TheBlob1958 The Blob]]'', with lyrics by Hal David's brother Mack.
* {{Instrumental}}: A lot of his own albums featured instrumental versions of hits he'd wrote for others, plus some original instrumentals, two of which made it onto the ''Look of Love'' box set ("Nikki", "Pacific Coast Highway").
* ItWillNeverCatchOn: "Trains and Boats and Planes" was written for Gene Pitney, but he turned it down, telling Bacharach that it was "not one of your best". Music/DionneWarwick would have a hit with it in America, while versions by Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas and Bacharach himself scored big in Britain.
* KidsRock: The chipper "Saturday Sunshine" from 1963, his first ''Billboard'' Hot 100 hit as an artist, features vocals by a chorus, but the lead part is sung by a rather shrill young boy.
* LocationSong:
** The Music/DionneWarwick song "Do You Know The Way To San José?" about a native of San José who didn't make it in UsefulNotes/LosAngeles and thus returns to her hometown.
** "Hasbrook Heights", about suburban life in UsefulNotes/NewJersey, though the actual town's name is Hasbrouck Heights.
* PleaseDontLeaveMe: "Any Day Now"
-->I know I shouldn't want to keep you\\
If you don't want to stay\\
Until you're gone forever\\
I'll be holding on for dear life\\
Holding you this way\\
Begging you to stay
* PopStarComposer:
** By the time ''Film/LostHorizon'' was being planned Bacharach and David were already music industry titans and were brought on to score the film.
** Creator/NeilSimon asked the producer of ''Theatre/PromisesPromises'' to hire Bacharach and David, neither of whom had written a stage musical before, to bring a contemporary pop sound to Broadway.
* RockOpera: ''On the Flip Side'', a musical written by Bacharach and David and broadcast on Creator/{{ABC}} in 1966, starring Music/RickyNelson as a former rock star struggling to regain popularity, is sometimes considered an early example.
* ShapedLikeItself: "After the Fox": "Who is the Fox? I am the Fox! Who are you? I am me! Who is me? Me is a thief!"
* StepUpToTheMicrophone: His solo albums generally featured instrumentals and chorus vocals, but Bacharach sang lead on a few select songs. By his own admission he didn't have a good singing voice at all (a husky baritone with flat phrasing), but he felt that he could sometimes give a song a little extra NarmCharm with his vocals. On "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" and his other Bacharach-David produced songs, B.J. Thomas kind of sounds like a more polished version of Bacharach.
* StepfordSuburbia: "Paper Mache", a song written for Music/DionneWarwick.
-->Twenty houses in a row\\
Eighty people watch a TV show\\
Paper people, cardboard dreams\\
How unreal the whole thing seems
* UncommonTime: A major trademark of his style, as his songs will often shift between several time signatures, and be based around oddball tempos, but done in a way that seems effortless and unnoticeable to the untrained ear. "Anyone Who Had a Heart" is often cited as the prime example in his work, since it starts off in a non-standard time signature (which sheet music publishers have interpreted as either 5[=/=]4, 9[=/=]8 or even 15[=/=]8!), then changes to a different one in the ''very next line'' (again, the sheet music varies, with 4[=/=]4 and 6[=/=]8 both getting cited), then shifts signatures throughout (including some 7[=/=]8). Good luck to the lyricist and singer having to deal with all that, and Hal David and Music/DionneWarwick both admitted the song was a struggle for them.
* WithLyrics: The soundtrack for ''Film/Arthur1981'' includes two pop songs that do not appear in the film but are With Lyrics versions of instrumental pieces from Burt Bacharach's underscore: "Money" became Ambrosia's "Poor Rich Boy" and "It's Only Love" became a Stephen Bishop song with the same title.
-----