As many of you know, the peerless popular music composer Burt Bacharach died this week. His songs, written with lyricist Hal David, covered the radio landscape through the 60’s, timeless hits such as “Walk on By,” “Say a Little Prayer,” “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.” Many were done in the flawlessly orchestrated smooth Bacharach style, sung by Dionne Warwick, but “Little Red Book,” was also covered, in what I would call the definitive version, upbeat and snarling, yet full of vulnerability, by 60’s L.A. band, Love.
Elvis Costello also recorded a Bacharach/David tune, “I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself,” with his band, The Attractions. Costello says of the recording, "It was a measure of how backwards things were in 1977 that some people actually thought I was making a joke when The Attractions and I began performing "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself." I was not being ironic. I was being extremely literal."
So literal, in fact, that given the emotional terrain of the song, it was as if it had been written for Costello, and if he hadn’t announced the writers at the outset of the live recording, could have been taken for his own composition.
In that context, before the magic of lyrics on the internet, I misheard the words of the song. Here are the correct lyrics.
Going to a movie only makes me sad
Parties make me feel as bad
Cause I'm not with you
I just don't know what to do
And here, the misheard lyrics.
Going to a movie only makes me sad
But it, wouldn’t be as bad
If it weren’t about you
I just don't know what to do
Now, if you listen to the recording, there’s no way you can make that mistake, going from “Cause I’m not with you,” to “If it weren’t about you.” So what must have happened was, in my memory, over time, I misremembered and rewrote the lyrics in my mind, thinking that this was how I’d originally heard them.
And the misremembered lyric is, I believe, in all due deference and respect to Hal David, better. It has the singer going to a movie to escape ongoing sadness and depression, and lo and behold, everything in the movie reminds him of her. Now, this is a bit of surrealism, or emotional fantasy that probably wouldn’t have passed in the early 60’s, when the song came out. A few years later, mid 60’s, it would have been just fine.
But the difference in the two verses is striking – from the first, a straightforward 60’s love song, sad because he isn’t with his girl, they’ve broken up – to a glimpse of the singer’s perception changing, due to his emotional state, so that he sees his lost love reflected in things in the outside world.
I don’t perform as a musician much anymore, but if I did, this would be the way I’d sing it.
With love and a tipped hat, to Burt and Hal.
I do. Boys had a particularly raw version, sexist. It was like in Animal house, you'd sing it together when you were out and saw a band play it, but I grew to dislike it. It was very objectifying.
Do you remember your own personal lyrics to "Louie, Louie"? We all had our own version.