Word: songful
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...lyrics (except those from Shakespeare) are sufficiently self-conscious to be repulsive. The title song actually advises us to Do your own thing/ Find you own dream/ Dig your own soul/ Or dig your own hole and die." This is nothing compared to "The Middle Years," a paean to middle-age that is a trifle too reminiscent of Birdie's "Kids" and The Girl Who Came to Supper's (a 1963 flop) "How do Do do, Middle Age." If nothing else, Your Own Thing shows exactly how big a sell-out Hair could have been...
...this scale of artistic integrity it is the names of Burt Bacharach and Hall David that must be put on top. Every song in their score for Promises, Promises, musically and lyrically, is faithful to the style established by the rest of their work--a kind of song-writing pretty much alien to both Broadway convention and acid-rock...
...Bacharach song, anything can happen. Listening to the original cast album (United Artists), one is consistently caught off guard by lyrics that defy normal rhyme schemes and music that is sensitive to the slightest lyrical change of heart...
Only when the score is called upon to express uninteresting sentiments does the score fall flat. For instance, a plot song ("Our Littlt Secret") which tells about a clandestine illicit arrangement between two characters, though done in the Bacharach-David manner, remains mundane because the subject matter is emotionally barren...
...most of the time, Promises, Promises is about love (and its ups and downs), and the songs run deep. Just before a suicide attempt, Miss O'Hara sings an anguished ballad (that has also been recorded by Dionne Warwick) in which she tells of the difficult man she loves. As the lyrics and music move from the barest hope ("However you are/ Deep down whatever you are/ Whoever you are/ I love you.") to a kind of understated terror ("From moment to moment/ You're two different people/ Someone I know as the man I love...