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Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach: Painted From Memory

Ian MacDonald, Uncut, November 1998

ONLY FIVE years ago in the UK, it needed to be reaffirmed that Burt Bacharach is one of the greatest popular musicians of the second half of this century. Not that this was news; we knew that 35 years ago when those wonderful Dionne Warwick singles were coming out and other artists were fighting to release cover versions in their own home markets. But times and sensibilities changed after 1976 and, by the late '80s, Bacharach was seen, if seen at all, as part of the ironically tolerated Easy Listening aesthetic — soft-focus, sentimental, air-conditioned condominium music.

Total word count of piece: 1122

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