School shootings inspire new Bacharach song
AT age 90, Burt Bacharach (pic) hasn’t lost faith in the power of music.
“Music softens the heart, makes you feel something if it’s good, brings in emotion that you might not have felt before,” he said.
“It’s a very powerful thing if you’re able to do to it, if you have it in your heart to do something like that.”
The celebrated songwriter has collaborated with fellow Grammy winner Rudy Perez on Live To See Another Day, a sombre ballad inspired by the Parkland massacre and other school shootings.
The song was recorded with the Miami Symphony Orchestra and features the vocals of two Florida teens, Haven Star and Angie Green. Proceeds will be donated to the Sandy Hook Promise Foundation, an anti-gun violence organisation based in Newtown, Connecticut, where a gunman killed 20 schoolchildren in 2012.
Bacharach says the new song, which includes such lyrics as “We can’t live like this forever/Got to have a change of heart,” was about love and “keeping our kids safe.”
“It’s just crazy,” he said of the school shootings. “I think the best you can do (as a songwriter) as far as putting out a message, is ... move people.”
Bacharach is among the most successful composers of his time, with hits including I Say A Little Prayer, Alfie and I’ll Never Fall In Love Again.
Bacharach says he has no plans to stop writing, or performing. He contributes music to a new album by Elvis Costello, a longtime admirer with whom Bacharach has worked with before, and he continues to tour, including a twohour show in July at London’s Royal Festival Hall.
“You can throw up your hands and say, ‘I can’t do this anymore’ but it’s what I do. I’m not just going to stop and retire, that is like dying, you know.”