“I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” (from Promises, Promises)

Your Burt Bacharach song of the day is “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” It was written for their musical, Promises, Promises, but made famous in a more radio-friendly version by Dionne Warwick that went to #6 on the Billboard Hot 100. The version from the Broadway musical is a lot more stripped down than the hit single, originally performed by Jill O’Hara and Jerry Orbach with a basic acoustic guitar accompaniment. Also, some of the phrasing is a little different from Dionne’s version.

However you play it, it’s a clever little song lyrically and one of Burt’s simpler songs harmonically. It’s relatively diatonic and doesn’t play too much in the extensions, although that Bacharach touch is still there. As to Hal’s lyrics, they cleverly denounce love and all of its little annoyances, at least until tomorrow. It’s a perfect fit for the two main characters in the play, based on Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine’s characters in Billy Wilder’s movie, The Apartment.

The story goes that Promises, Promises was in tryouts but producer David Merrick realized they needed a song in the middle of the second act, something the audience could whistle on the way out of the theater. He went to Burt and Hal but Burt was waylaid in the hospital with a bout of pneumonia. Hal wrote the lyrics anyway, partly inspired by Burt’s hospital stay, and then turned them over to Burt when he was released. Burt saw those lyrics and, in his words, “wrote the melody for ‘I’ll Never Fall in Love Again’ faster than I had ever written any song in my life.”

“I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” became the musical’s big hit tune, pretty much stopping the show every night. It was good enough to be nominated for (but not win) a Grammy for Song of the Year in 1969. Dionne’s version did win a Grammy the following year, for Best Contemporary Musical Performance, and Bobby Gentry’s cover version hit #1 on the UK charts.