The art of crafting successful pop singles can be a hit-and-miss affair, and for many people in the recording industry the most important component of a commercially viable record is a great song.Footnote ¹ But because songs destined for the top-40 market need to be turned into appealing records, some musicians remark on the importance of clothing songs in striking arrangements. ‘The arrangement is everything that makes a hit record’, suggests Richard Carpenter, ‘you can have the best singer on the planet and the best song, but if you don't have the right arrangement for that song and singer, the singer's going nowhere and so is the song’ (Olsen et al. Reference Olsen, Verna and Wolff1999, p. 115). Burt Bacharach phrases the notion somewhat differently. ‘You can have a hell of a song,’ he says, ‘and have it spoiled by a bad arrangement or production … you need the right showcase’ (Saal Reference Saal1970, p. 51). These comments probably could be applied to any number of well written songs that failed to chart, but one in particular, Bacharach and David's ‘(They Long to Be) Close to You’, aptly illustrates the points they make. Bacharach's first two attempts at producing the song, one with Richard Chamberlain in 1963 and the other with Dionne Warwick the following year were, and still are, considered artistic failures.Footnote ² In fact, the full potential of the song remained unrealised until 1970 when, without input from Bacharach, Richard and Karen Carpenter turned ‘Close to You’ into a hit that reached number one in the USA and spent four weeks at the top of the Billboard charts.

These three versions of ‘Close to You’ demonstrate the vital role arrangements play in determining the artistic merit of a recording, and by comparing Bacharach's failed versions with the Carpenters' successful rendition of the song, I anchor the notion of hits and misses to Carpenter's and Bacharach's insistence that a great song cannot become a hit without the ‘right’ arrangement. In short, I investigate how recordists either enhance (Carpenters) or diminish (Bacharach) the impact of the story told in the lyrics through the creation and release of emotional and musical tension, the expressive flow of a recording.

My study focuses, then, on musical structure, that is, the disposition and inter-relationship of those features which shape and ultimately determine a recording's sonic vitality, and it concentrates on musical elements in isolation from factors such as market considerations, factors which may have a bearing on the commercial fortunes of a recording but do not directly contribute to what musicians regard as the aesthetic superiority of one version over another.Footnote ³ I take my cue here from Burt Bacharach himself, for in an interview with Paul Zollo dating from 1997, he discusses the failure of ‘Close to You’ in relation to musical properties alone: ‘I'm very grateful to Richard Carpenter making that record the way that they heard it. Because the way that I heard it was very different and not very good. I made the first few records of it with the wrong groove, wrong feel. Richard came in and nailed it’ (Zollo Reference Zollo2003, p. 209).Footnote ⁴ He has always openly acknowledged his ‘misses’, and in an interview with Bill DeMain he said that ‘the first record [of ‘Close to You’] with Richard Chamberlain … was a terrible record. I had a terrible arrangement and a terrible concept' (DeMain Reference DeMain1997).Footnote ⁵ Bacharach's appraisal of his recordings clearly centres on musical features without reference to extra-musical factors and, as quoted above, Richard Carpenter, just like Bacharach, believed arrangements have a direct bearing on the hit-or-miss potential of a recording.

In contextualising my work within the musical culture of arrangers, particularly Bacharach and Carpenter, I focus on several elements of creativity central to the art of making records and place the musical activities of recordists in a framework that resonates with popular musicians. In other words, I do not impose foreign musical or scholarly cultures on the recordings under consideration. Consequently, the methodologies I employ are rooted not in Schenkerian techniques, cultural studies, semiotics, poststructuralism, psychology or sociology but in readings of texts that, to paraphrase Theodore Gracyk, square with the views of the musicians themselves (Gracyk Reference Gracyk1996, p. xiv). Indeed, writers such as Stephen Blum (Reference Blum and Myers1992, p. 213) and Albin Zak (Reference Zak2001, p. xiii) regard musicians as the best guides to the study of musical practices, and Adam Krims (Reference Krims2000, p. 29) further argues that musical organisation must be taken seriously precisely because artists, the music industry and listeners take it seriously. I share the views of these scholars and choose to concentrate on those principles of musical structure that govern the arranging and transformation of musical ideas.

Musicians generally shape arrangements either privately in individual workspaces or collaboratively during the recording process, and in cases where demos and other preliminary versions have been released, researchers can readily study the creative process that led to the final mix, that is, the ultimate interpretation of a song, issued on disc. But when no demos, outtakes or other preliminary arrangements are available for scrutiny, compositional practices can be uncovered only from the released version and, in the absence of testimony from the recordists involved, studies of this sort must remain speculative. However, when a producer like Burt Bacharach recorded one of his own songs with more than one artist and worked from the same basic arrangement each time, the recordings themselves reveal the ways in which the musical material has been altered in an effort to capture that elusive hit.

Without a doubt, Bacharach's two early versions of ‘Close to You’ failed to excite the interest of listeners, even though the second recording had a much better singer in Dionne Warwick and Bacharach had improved the arrangement. But, as the Carpenters aptly demonstrated in 1970, the song itself was not the problem, for Bacharach had composed memorable tunes and rich harmonies to which Hal David had added, to borrow Serene Dominic's words (2003, p. 110), ‘clever lines about birds and stars going out of their way to be close to you’ (see Example 1).Footnote ⁶ David's lyric style, however, consisted of much more than clever lines, for he sought to incorporate in his writing some of the features he admired in the lyrics of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart and Johnny Mercer: believability, simplicity and emotional impact (David http://www.haldavid.com/words.htm).Footnote ⁷ ‘Close to You’ embraces all three of these qualities and presents an uncomplicated story readily familiar to most people, the infatuation of a boy for a girl. But instead of developing his story in a linear fashion, David utilises Bacharach's verse-bridge structure to reveal a fully realised scenario in careful, logical stages. The parallel structure of the two introductory verses, replete with teasers in the form of questions,Footnote ⁸ illustrates rather than states directly the central emotion of the lyric; the unpretentious imagery of these verses (birds suddenly appearing and stars falling down from the sky) not only explains why the central figure of the song is so popular but also prepares listeners for the climactic moment in the bridge. Here the speaker gushes effusively about angels creating his dream come true, and the energy that accumulates across the five lines of this emotional climax dissipates in the third verse when the speaker concludes ‘that is why all the boys in town follow you all around’.

Example 1. Lyrics, ‘(They Long to Be) Close to You’. Words and music by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Copyright © 1963 New Hidden Valley Music and Casa David; copyright renewed © 1991 New Hidden Valley Music and Casa David; international copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

In crafting their song, then, Bacharach and David seem to have restricted the emotional ebb and flow of the drama to two levels of intensity, one for the verses and another for the bridge. The uniformity of sentiment expressed in the verses, facilitated by both a refrain (‘just like me, they long to be close to you’) and an unvarying musical setting, contrasts sharply with the rising tension of the bridge, tension engendered by a melodic line which ascends in three stages until it reaches a culminating peak on the final word (see Example 2). However, in order for the recordists to transform the structural foundation of the song into effective musical discourse, they needed to enhance the basic framework provided by the songwriters, and in liberating the composition from its relatively inexpressive form, the musicians involved added the rhythmic flexibility that composers rarely try to capture in their notation (see Example 3 and n. 13) and clothed the raw song in arrangements intended to create a satisfying dramatic flow. Both Bacharach and Carpenter found their own ways of distributing musical ideas and instruments within the mix, but Bacharach's first attempts at realising ‘Close to You’ on disc, by his own admission, missed the mark.

Example 2. Bridge (as published). ‘(They Long to Be) Close to You.’ Words and music by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Copyright © 1963 New Hidden Valley Music and Casa David; copyright renewed © 1991 New Hidden Valley Music and Casa David; international copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Example 3. Speech-like (prosodic) rhythms (the first line appears as published, and the other two lines are transcribed from the recordings by Chamberlain and Warwick). ‘(They Long to Be) Close to You.’ Words and music by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Copyright © 1963 New Hidden Valley Music and Casa David; copyright renewed © 1991 New Hidden Valley Music and Casa David; international copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

In fairness to Bacharach, however, his sessions with Chamberlain and Warwick were constrained by the recording practices of the day. In the early 1960s, producers usually had to work quickly in the studio and, in Bacharach's own words, he often had to execute ‘a whole arrangement, right on the spot. Good or bad or whatever, it was there’ (‘Bacharach & David’ 1978, p. 8). Phil Ramone remembers the pressure producers like Bacharach were under at his own A&R Studios in New York: ‘In those days, we used to do three-hour sessions, and … in three hours you were supposed to cut at least four songs … As an engineer, I was constantly looking at the clock and you had to be able to get a balance in an amazingly short time. If you couldn't balance a rhythm section and pull up a good level on the horns within five minutes, you were not considered good enough to work with the pros. So the clock often determined what a record would sound like’ (Cunningham Reference Cunningham1998, p. 59). Obviously, Bacharach had to work expeditiously to get good performances out of his musicians. Even though he repeatedly used the same nucleus of musicians and had learned to remedy deficiencies in an arrangement quite quickly in the studio (Rudman Reference Rudman1964b, p. 18), Steve Tyrell, a staff producer at Scepter Records, remembers that ‘those records were recorded live, all at one time – with Dionne singing, the strings playing, the horns playing, the rhythm section and the background vocals. Everybody was in there, and Burt was standing in the middle’ (Platts Reference Platts2003, p. 46).Footnote ⁹ Bacharach confirmed in an interview in 1970 that he preferred recording ‘live, like a crap game, with everyone hearing everyone else at the same time’ instead of making records piecemeal (Saal Reference Saal1970, p. 52).

Bacharach had gradually managed to gain complete control over his sessions, one of the main reasons he decided to produce his own songs in the first place,Footnote ¹⁰ and in 1964 Hal David spoke of the meticulous way in which he and Burt worked: ‘before we even think of recording we completely finish and polish the strongest song we feel we can write at that time … it often takes from two to three months to produce a single record. This includes the inception of a song, through thorough rehearsing, careful planning of [the] arrangement and careful planning of the choral background’ (Rudman Reference Rudman1964a, p. 14). Later in the same interview, Bacharach elaborated on David's comments: ‘we take three days to two weeks to compose a song, working separately and together. We hear the song over 400 times … [and] when we feel it is right and have taught the song to the artist and thoroughly rehearsed the performance, we're up to about 450 listenings. I then go home and plan the arrangement which gives me another 80 listenings’. All this preparation certainly paid off, for Gene Pitney recalled the thrill of working with Bacharach in the studio: ‘his command [of the orchestra at Bell Sound Studios in New York] was electrifying. The musicians had so much respect that they would be absolutely quiet and do his every bidding … to watch the masters [Bacharach and David] at work while I was singing the vocals was a complete rush that prompted that extra 10 per cent out of my performance’ (Platts Reference Platts2003, pp. 20–21). Bacharach often recorded dozens of takes, admitting to as many as 24 in his 1964 interview with Billboard, and many years later, when speaking of the recording session for ‘Alfie’ with Cilla Black, he said, ‘I was very hard on the singer. I don't think she knew what hit her. We must have gone 28 or 29 takes with her [looking for] that little bit more’ (Brocken Reference Brocken2003, p. 182). In fact, Bacharach allowed most singers very little musical freedom during recording sessions, for even though rehearsals leading to a recording date might induce Bacharach to make small changes to a song, Dionne Warwick recalled that ‘by and large, whatever [Bacharach and David] wrote was what they wrote and that's what we sang’ (Platts Reference Platts2003, p. 32). Rose Marie Jun, one of Bacharach's backing singers in the late 1960s, concurs:

Similarly, B.J. Thomas remembers his rehearsal with Bacharach just prior to recording ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head’:

As these singers demonstrate, Bacharach notated his songs meticulously, Carole Bayer Sager stating that his penchant for precision could sometimes irritate the lyricist working with him:

Bacharach's attention to detail became legendary among the artists he produced,Footnote ¹¹ so much so that it is probably safe to assume that his initial recordings of ‘Close to You’ remained firmly in his control.

The arrangement he wrote for the song, despite his public insistence in 1964 that he and David planned all aspects of a recording meticulously, centres on a groove he later admitted did not evoke the right feel, and critics have certainly noticed this, especially on the Chamberlain recording, where prominent piano chords in the accompaniment pulse on quavers at a tempo of 72 bpm.Footnote ¹² The pianist's staccato manner of playing these chords generates a rigid quality which Bacharach foregrounds and simple drum and acoustic bass parts contribute to the tedium of the groove (the snare provides a straight backbeat while the bass emphasises beats one and three). Unfortunately, Chamberlain's mechanistic singing seems to reinforce the rhythmic monotony of the accompaniment, and because Bacharach did not use an instrumental introduction to define the groove, the first few notes Chamberlain sings are crucially important. But instead of beginning the song with a clear rhythmic impetus, Bacharach placed pause signs above the first two notes and Chamberlain, following the notation precisely, lengthened these notes as he sang them. Strings provide the backdrop for this introductory gesture, and Bacharach's decision to double the singer with single notes played on the electric guitar does little to entice the listener into the sonic world of the song. The sparse instrumentation that follows (piano, acoustic bass and drums), coupled to the languid opening and monotonous groove, prevents the song from making a satisfactory impression in the critical first 15–20 seconds.

Bacharach retains this basic arrangement in the second verse but thickens the texture with the addition of a counter melody in the strings and, in order to hide a moment of stasis in the half bar that separates the verses, he inserts arpeggiated chords on successive beats, first on the piano and then on the guitar. A much larger gap of a full bar exists between the second verse and the bridge and, even though many recordists would consider this an obvious place to build tension in preparation for the emotional climax of the song, Bacharach's arrangement does not drive forward at this point. A short horn fill, followed in the strings by a heavily emphasised harmonic descent from dominant to tonic, barely provides adequate musical resources for leading the listener imperceptibly from one level to the next. The bridge itself begins innocuously with a simple stepwise counter melody in the strings that pushes upwards in the second phrase to the climactic passage in the last two bars. Here, the pulsing eighth notes in all parts, augmented by Chamberlain's most impassioned singing, represent the climax of the recording. The energy accumulated across the bridge then dissipates in two piano glissandi that return listeners to the emotional plane of the earlier verses, and not surprisingly Bacharach disposes his instrumental backdrop in a manner very similar to those verses, even though he varies the string writing somewhat. A single repetition of the refrain, joined to the third verse through a horn fill, functions as the outro and gradually fades to draw the song to a close.

Although Bacharach eventually acknowledged that this arrangement was a miscalculation, initially he must have been satisfied with much of his work on the song, because he retained many features of the Chamberlain version when he produced Dionne Warwick's recording the following year. Warwick had become a favourite singer of Bacharach and David, and her natural vocal delivery suited their songs well. In fact, despite her protestations to the contrary quoted above, Bacharach granted her the rare privilege of interpreting his melodies as she saw fit, and in 1966 he acknowledged that he no longer made suggestions to her, for he had come to realise that whatever she sang would be a ‘jewel’ (Saal Reference Saal1966, p. 102; Wilson Reference Wilson1968, p. D17). As Warwick recalled decades later, ‘they were the songwriters and I was the interpreter’ (O'Brien Reference O'Brien2002, p. 91), and since her interpretive sensibilities were derived from the normal accentuation of spoken words, especially with regard to the rhythmic structure she had always imposed on Bacharach's melodies, her prosodic singing style contrasted sharply with that of Richard Chamberlain. Chamberlain preferred the type of vocal delivery practiced by numerous crooners and opera singers, and he regularly elongated vowels, holding many notes for their full value, and rarely shaped individual notes dynamically, either by swelling into or tapering off them. Moreover, he cemented successive notes together to produce what could best be described as a true legato style with no break in sound and used vibrato on every note long enough to admit it. Warwick, on the other hand, sang with much more dynamic shading and controlled her vibrato carefully, frequently beginning longer notes with a straight tone before adding a slow vibration. And because her delivery was much more closely aligned to speaking, she rarely adhered to the mechanical way the vocal lines had been notated, even though she did hold the last notes of phrases close to the length Bacharach had indicated. Chamberlain also used speech-like rhythms on occasion, especially when Bacharach's melody contained shorter values (see Example 3), but in the second half of the bridge, both singers adhered to the robotic pulsing of the chordal accompaniment.

Nonetheless, despite the differences in vocal style between the two singers, Bacharach decided to preserve the tempo and basic flavour of the original groove in the second recording, particularly the pulsing quaver chords played on the piano (a chart which compares the recordings appears in Example 4). But because these chords were placed in a higher register and were performed with a light legato touch, the accompaniment sounded less robotic, and the removal of the snare from the backbeat further helped establish, to borrow Bacharach's words, a better feel. Apart from this improvement, however, the languorous introduction remained more or less the same, except that a cymbal splash preceded the first two notes of the vocal and a vibraphone replaced the electric guitar. The addition of the vibraphone certainly resulted in a softer, more blended sound, but the rest of the first verse retained the instrumentation of the earlier recording. Bacharach seems to have been satisfied with other features of Chamberlain's version as well, because in the second verse of the Warwick recording, even though he gave the strings a subdued quality, he kept the figuration of his original arrangement. The transitions between sections, however, clearly dissatisfied him, for instead of hiding the moment of stasis between the first two verses with arpeggiated chords, he used a flowing horn melody, and in the full bar that separates the second verse from the bridge, he substituted a tympani roll for the exaggerated string gesture. This new figure provided an effective ramp to the heightened tension of the bridge but, unlike the Chamberlain recording where Bacharach intensified this contrasting section as it progressed, Warwick's version maintains a uniform texture and level of intensity throughout (achieved in part by the back-up singers doubling the counter melody in the strings and the tympanist decorating the first and third beats of each bar). Bacharach then dissipated the accumulated energy of the bridge in the same way that he did on the Chamberlain recording: two piano glissandi transport listeners to the third verse and return them to the instrumental backdrop and emotional plane of the opening. The recording closes with an outro similarly restricted to a single repetition of the refrain, but in Warwick's case, back-up singers carry the main melody while she echoes and decorates the tune in a quasi call-and-response manner. This creates a much more satisfactory close to the song and the Warwick recording, despite Bacharach's decision to retain many features of the original arrangement, was decidedly better than the Chamberlain version. Nevertheless, Bacharach and David felt that they still hadn't found the ‘right rendition’ and artistic and commercial success continued to elude the song until Herb Alpert, to whom David had sent a copy of Warwick's version of ‘Close to You’ (in response to a request for a song that hadn't been a hit but which still haunted him), suggested to Richard Carpenter, one of his label's new artists, that he work up an arrangement (Coleman Reference Coleman1994, pp. 82–83; Platts Reference Platts2003, pp. 76–77).

Example 4. Disposition of the song's sections.

On his website, Carpenter describes in considerable detail several features of his arrangement, as well as his initial reaction to the song:

In discussing some of the ways he breathed life into the song, to borrow Bacharach's analogy (Platts Reference Platts2003, p. 77), Carpenter focuses his attention on the arrangement, especially the tag he composed to provide a stronger ending to the recording, and his comments allow us to understand his craft from an arranger's perspective. He first mentions the groove, a slow shuffle, and then he lists several other facets of the arrangement (modulation, trumpet solo, tag and intro riff) that differentiate his interpretation from Bacharach's. The slow shuffle on which he bases the song, however, actually operates at a faster tempo than Bacharach had chosen (87 bpm instead of 72), yet Carpenter's version, clocking in at 3:37, was over a minute longer than either the Chamberlain recording (2:16) or the Warwick version (2:21). Undoubtedly, Carpenter felt he needed a longer, more nuanced structure to create an expressive flow that would enhance the story told in the lyrics in a way that a shorter treatment of the song could not. Hence, he added an instrumental introduction, modulated from C to D flat at the trumpet solo, repeated the bridge and third verse, and composed two endings to be heard in succession. The first ending simply restated the piano introduction in A flat, while the second introduced new material which in Carpenter's own words ‘came out of left field’. The chart in Example 4 schematically represents the differences between the two approaches.

Carpenter's introduction defines the groove right at the outset and the attractive piano riff he devised, with its gently swinging triplet feel, engages the listener immediately. He adds a vibraphone half way through, and this exemplifies one of the general principles Carpenter follows in his arrangements – add or subtract sonic events at significant structural moments in order to create or release musical and emotional tension. As his short nine-second intro draws to a close, the vocal emerges from the final chord. Gone are the pauses Bacharach had stipulated for the first two notes of the verse and Carpenter's piano accompaniment, which pulses on crotchet chords played midrange on the instrument, not only continues the relaxed feel of the intro but also provides the sole accompaniment for the singer's delivery of the first verse. Karen sings this verse in a prosodic vocal style and, just like Dionne Warwick, she separates notes from one another and keeps the last notes of phrases short (except for the ends of periods). This detached manner of singing suits the quicker tempo of the groove, and the lilting feel of this faster pace also conditions her use of vibrato, a vocal technique she restricts primarily to longer notes at the end of phrases, where the broadening effect of a vibrating note, rather than inhibiting forward motion, delicately draws the passages to a close.

However, Richard's choice of tempo does more than determine specific features of Karen's vocal style, for it eliminates the moment of stasis between the first and second verses, allowing the two verses to be joined together seamlessly. At the beginning of the second verse, a thicker texture, achieved through the introduction of drums, bass and strings, augments the intensity somewhat. Hal Blaine, the drummer on the recording, emphasises the backbeat while tapping straight crotchets on the hi-hat, and the bass guitar, reinforced by the kick drum, stresses the first and third beats of the bar. The strings, functioning as a backdrop to the metric interplay between the hi-hat and bass, provide chordal pads for the most part but, just before the refrain, a simple descending line in crotchets fills the space in a manner reminiscent of the highly decorative melody Bacharach had composed for this purpose. Carpenter's transition to the bridge, similar to Bacharach's treatment of the passage, heightens tension only minimally, presumably because he wanted to save the most powerful approach to this section for the climactic moment of the recording, the repetition of the bridge. The first statement of the bridge, then, remains subdued, Carpenter simply adding woodwind instruments to a string figure he seems to have derived from Bacharach, while Blaine increases the rhythmic activity in the drums through a triplet quaver figure played on a muted cymbal. The strings drop out for the last two bars and this leaves the woodwinds, bass and drums to propel the instrumental backdrop subtly towards the two piano glissandi Herb Alpert insisted Carpenter retain from Bacharach's recording (Coleman Reference Coleman1994, p. 84). These clinching hooks, to borrow Alpert's words (ibid.), make an effective transition to the third verse, but Carpenter begins this verse somewhat differently from the previous two verses, for Hal Blaine employs low-tuned toms to cover the static nature of this compositional moment. The rest of the verse, however, proceeds in a manner similar to the second verse, except that Carpenter introduces backup singers who echo the phrases Karen sings.

At the end of the third verse, following a quarter-second of silence, the music abruptly modulates to D flat and Chuck Findley, the trumpet soloist on the recording, plays the verse melody in imitation of Karen's style of phrasing (Coleman Reference Coleman1994, p. 84).Footnote ¹³ The disposition of the instrumental backdrop behind the trumpet remains similar to that of the previous verse, but at the end of the verse, Richard replaces the refrain with a section in which the strings play a modified version of the opening piano figure. The final bar of this passage brings the piano to the fore, and new keyboard figuration, accompanied by low-tuned toms, leads listeners to the heightened intensity of the second bridge. Here, Richard's treatment of the vocal strengthens the impact of the section considerably, even though he maintains much of the earlier instrumentation and part writing (especially the string and woodwind figures, along with triplet quavers on the muted cymbal, the kick drum accentuating the first and third beats, and the hi-hat articulating the backbeat). He double tracks Karen's voice in the first line of text and then in the second line supports it with harmonies that widen from two to three to four notes to create a harmonic crescendo to the apex of the song. This carefully crafted intensification culminates in the last bar with Hal Blaine's drum work, where fills on the toms lead to a cymbal roll that drives the passage to a peak. The tension reached in this climactic moment is released across a one-second reverberant tail of cymbal and piano, and the sudden textural thinning that follows returns listeners to the emotional plane of the verses. Richard applies generous reverb to the two notes of the vocal pickup, both sung without accompaniment but, other than this, his arrangement for the repetition of the third verse retains much of its earlier flavour. The verse closes with two statements of the refrain, and a return of the opening piano riff in A flat rounds out the structure, ‘bookending’ the song.

But because Richard did not want to end ‘Close to You’ just as it had begun, he decided to compose a vocal tag that, in his words, ‘came out of left field’. Inspired by the way Bacharach had concluded ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head’, he extended the song by 38 seconds with vocal ‘wahs’ based on rich harmonies involving major ninth chords alternating between D flat and A flat. The striking effect of the new material in this lush postlude became one of the most memorable sonic events of the song, so much so that Richard himself questions whether anyone could imagine ‘Close to You’ ending without the tag. In fact, after hearing the Carpenters' version of the song, one can easily understand why Bacharach praised Richard and Karen for ‘nailing’ it. Their long, nuanced structure, with its lilting groove and striking arrangement, captivated listeners and produced the Carpenters' first number one record. The gold sales award the single received from the Recording Industry Association of America on 12 August 1970, three months after the record was released, attests to the wide appeal of the song.

Bacharach occasionally spoke about the popularity of his music, telling The New Yorker in 1968 that ‘the wild thing about my songs is that they cross the two age gaps. They're hits with people my parents’ age and they're hits with the kids, too' (Ross Reference Ross1968, p. 45), and at least one commentator from the late 1960s, Bob Shayne of the Los Angeles Times, noted Bacharach's unique ability to bridge the generation gap. Bacharach and David songs, Shayne observed, ‘especially when produced by them and sung by Dionne Warwick, get played on the middle-of-the-road radio stations, the rock stations and most rhythm and blues stations as well. Their records are bought by whites and blacks, young and old’ (Shayne Reference Shayne1968, p. C7). Indeed, Hubert Saal, writing for Newsweek in 1970, noticed that Bacharach's audience at the Westbury Music Fair was a cross-section of people ranging in age from eight to 80 and, in his article, he quotes from a letter Bacharach received from a young Catholic schoolgirl asking him to write a school yell for her: ‘What would take me two weeks will take you only five minutes … P.S. The nuns dig you too’ (Saal Reference Saal1970, p. 50).

One of the factors contributing to Bacharach and David's wide appeal seems to have been their desire to please themselves instead of writing for a specific market. ‘When Hal and I write,’ Bacharach says, ‘we don't think about markets or what will go. Is this a comer? Is this too complicated for the people? No. I'm just trying to satisfy myself’ (Shayne Reference Shayne1968, p. C7). By writing songs he liked, Bacharach believed that other people might like them, too, and the one thing he and David never did in their career was ‘try to write a “commercial” song. [We] don't think in terms of hits. [We] think in terms of good and bad’ (‘Bacharach & David’ 1978, p. 17). Commercial aspirations, Bacharach felt, would just trap them in a corner (Cumming Reference Cumming2001), and ironically one of their most ‘uncommercial’ songs, the jazz waltz ‘Wives and Lovers’, became a hit for Jack Jones in the USA.Footnote ¹⁴ A good record, then, at least according to Bacharach, David and Richard Carpenter, needs not only the right artist but also the right showcase. Bacharach readily admits that with ‘Close to You’ he and David found neither the appropriate artist nor arrangement, but the Carpenters, in ‘nailing’ the song, found a musical concept that produced a much more appealing expressive flow (Hilburn Reference Hilburn1970, p. N37; DeMain Reference DeMain1997). As Bacharach said in 1970, shortly after the Carpenters released their version of ‘Close to You’, ‘you write some music and think it has fallen dead … then all of a sudden the thing takes off’ (Hebert Reference Hebert1970, p. D8).