Perry Como – Magic Moments
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The setting for Magic Moments feels more prewar than 1950s. The bonhomie of its whistled intro is echoed by a courtship storyline – "The way that we cheered whenever our team was scoring a touchdown/ The time that the floor fell out of my car when I put the clutch down" – straight out of a Jimmy Stewart movie. Perry Como's single knocked another Bacharach/David song, Michael Holliday's equally easygoing The Story of My Life, off the UK No 1 spot in 1958: Britain recognised the duo's burgeoning greatness early on.
Dee Clark – You're Telling Our Secrets
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It's easy to forget Bacharach and David were among the most successful Brill Building writing teams. They may have been older than Goffin and King, but they could still turn out slabs of teenage paranoia like this. David's lyric paints a pitiful figure ("How can you be so cruel to someone with a broken heart?") who "cried like a baby" when his girl left him. Then he takes it a stage further: Dee Clark sees his ex with her new boyfriend, which is humiliating enough, but he also believes they are "having fun just laughing at me … reading the letters you promised to hide". Though the mocking laughter is all in Clark's head, the sweet hurt of his delivery sounds real enough.
Burt Bacharach Orchestra and Chorus – Trains and Boats and Planes
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As Bacharach moved into a jetset lifestyle, frequently separated from his new bride Angie Dickinson, David wrote this lyric to match. Appropriately, it was initially recorded in England (where it was a No 4 hit) by Bacharach with session singers the Breakaways providing the vocal. David's lyric blames the couple's separation squarely on modes of transport. The blankness of the Breakaways' delivery, combined with the tranquilised sleepiness of the melody, suggests they don't really believe what they're singing – shifting the blame from the husband to Boeing and British Rail is the only way they can get by.
Billie Davis – Last One to Be Loved
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The naivety of the lyric could be a wide-eyed come on, and it doesn't really convince when sung by someone as clearly grown-up as Dionne Warwick or Lou Johnson. But when lonely, fragile Billie Davis sings: "Forgive me, I am so new to this," you don't only give her the benefit of the doubt, you really worry for a girl who thought she'd been left on the shelf for good. Few lyricists would dare to write a line like "When I'm close to you I'm scared to death" – it's not quite Steve Wright's Sunday Love Songs, but it's how love really feels.
Herb Alpert – This Guy's in Love With You
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This mix of yearning, anticipation and gentle desperation was a more mature take on Last One to Be Loved, building on its concluding line ("Without your love I just know that I would die") but adding a sensual confidence ("I've heard some talk, they say you think I'm fine"). It was left in a drawer for a year or more, and only emerged when Herb Alpert asked Bacharach if he had ever written a hit that got away. Even then, it was chucked away as an album track, only getting rush-released as a single when Alpert sang it on a CBS TV special in April 1968. Within six weeks, it gave Bacharach and David their first US No 1. Noel Gallagher has called it "the best love song ever"; with the possible exceptions of Wichita Lineman and Stardust, it's hard to argue.
