A Fitting Farewell

When two songwriting greats combined.

- Terry Staunton

Burt Bacharach & Elvis Costello 

The Songs Of Bacharach & Costello 

4/5

UMe 4848614 (4CD)

When 23-year-old Elvis Costello included Burt Bacharach & Hal David's I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself in the set of his first tour with The Attractions in late 1977, it's unlikely he entertained notions of ever collaborating directly with one of popular song's grandmasters. A little more than 20 years later, however, he was sharing equal billing on the sublime, sophisticated Painted From Memory.

That album of 12 co-writes provides the skeleton of this box set, assembled during the latter half of 2022 but destined to now be seen as a form of eulogy following Bacharach's death, aged 94, on 8 February. As a whole, it's a much wider chronicle of a creative partnership that takes in songs for a mooted Broadway musical, one-off movie soundtrack contributions and numerous other entries in the Elvis discography where he's called upon the brilliance of one of his childhood heroes.