Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

Today, on March 8, the lyricist Carole Bayer Sager celebrates her 75th birthday, and so it’s good to mark the occasion with Any Major Songbook of songs she has co-written.

Unlike the Carole whose works we enjoyed last month on Any Major Carole King Songbook Vol. 1, this Carole is easily underestimated. Much of it has to do with the music which scores her often exquisite lyrics. Many of the songs were written for movie soundtracks in the 1980s and ’90s, and are arranged according to those requirements, and few lay down the funk or shred with punk. And yet, those movie songs include such greats as Arthur’s Theme and Nobody Does It Better. For the latter, Bayer Sager had to work in the title of the Bond flick it scored without it sounding embarrassing — a task even Paul McCartney found difficult to execute (he, too, succeeded in it).

Bayer Sager is a superb observer of adult relationships especially. Witness this line from On My Own: “Now we’re up to talking divorce and we were not even married”.

Bayer Sager writes the words; the music has been written by legendary composers such as her ex-husband Burt Bacharach, Marvin Hamlisch, Neil Sedaka, Marvin Hamlisch, Michael Masser, and David Foster (the latter has written some relentlessly bad stuff, but he also committed strokes of genius like Cheryl Lynn’s Got To Be Real).

She has also written frequently with Australian soft-rocker Peter Allen and fellow soft-rock auteur Bruce Roberts, whom we encountered on Not Feeling Guilty Mix Vol. 11. And with Albert Hammond, she co-wrote the later Leo Sayer hit When I Need You, and its b-side, which features here as a bonus track (and on which Hammond shamelessly plagiarised himself).

Pleasingly, there was a convergence of the two great Caroles in 1998, when Carole King co-wrote the song Anyone At All with Bayer Sager, and recorded it for the You’ve Got Mail soundtrack.

Like King, Carole Bayer (as she was then) started out on the Brill Building scene, while still a student at New York City’s High School of Music and Art. There she collaborated with Toni Wine, whose voice we heard this month on Sugar Sugar, in the line “I’m gonna make your life so sweet”, on Any Major Sugar. Carole, still only 18, produced one of the earliest uses of the word “groovy” in song lyrics, in A Groovy Kind Of Love, co-written with Wine and first recorded in 1965 by the rather obscure duo Diane & Annita, and soon a global hit for The Mindbenders (and 23 years later for Phil Collins). See Any Major Originals – The Classics for more on that song.

After the Brill Building era, during which she also wrote for The Monkees, she became Carole Bayer Sager, having married record producer Andrew Sager in 1970. She then worked a lot with up-and-coming singer Melissa Manchester. Then she hooked up, in more ways than one, with Marvin Hamlisch, and then with Burt Bacharach, to whom she was married from 1982-91.

In between, Bayer Sager released three albums, which were quite good. One of them featured the song It’s The Falling In Love, which Michael Jackson would later record for Off The Wall. Bayer Sager’s version will feature on the next Not Feeling Guilty mix. In return, Jackson did backing vocals on Carole’s 1981 song Just Friends (see the Michael Jackson Backing Vocals Collection)

Like that song, a few songs here are better known in their cover versions than in the featured originals: Rod Stewart’s bearable version of That’s What Friends Are For from the 1982 Nightshift soundtrack (I do not like the 1985 all-star hit version at all); and Starmaker by Carole’s frequent collaborator Bruce Roberts, which later became famous in The Kids from Fame. I’ve decided to go with the Family Brown soul version of When I Need You, rather than Hammond’s original or Leo Sayer’s hit. (Get Hammond’s original on Any Major Originals – 1970s Vol. 1).

As ever, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R (that is, by excluding the “bonus tracks), and includes how-scribbled covers, and the text above in an illustrated PDF. PW in comments.

1. The Monkees – The Girl I Left Behind Me (1969, with Neil Sedaka)
2. The Mindbenders – Groovy Kind Of Love (1965, with Toni Wine)
3. Terry Rice-Milton – Your Heart’s Not In Your Love (1970, with Neil Sedaka)
4. Melissa Manchester – If It Feels Good (Let It Ride) (1973, with Melissa Manchester)
5. Pointer Sisters – The Love Too Good To Last (1980, with Peter Allen & Burt Bacharach)
6. Cheryl Lynn – Come In From The Rain (1978, with Melissa Manchester)
7. Roberta Flack & Peabo Bryson – Maybe (1983, with Burt Bacharach & Marvin Hamlisch)
8. Christopher Cross – Arthur’s Theme (1981, with Peter Allen & Burt Bacharach)
9. Carly Simon – Nobody Does It Better (1977, with Marvin Hamlisch)
10. Diana Ross – It’s My Turn (1980, with Michael Masser)
11. Dolly Parton – You’re The Only One (1979, with Bruce Roberts)
12. Elkie Brooks – Don’t Cry Out Loud (1978, with Peter Allen)
13. Carole King – Anyone At All (1998, with Carole King)
14. Aretha Franklin & Michael McDonald – Ever Changing Times (1991, with Burt Bacharach & Bill Conti)
15. Reba McEntire – On My Own (1995, with Burt Bacharach)
16. Family Brown – When I Need You (1978, with Albert Hammond)
17. Thelma Jones – I’d Rather Leave While I’m In Love (1978, with Peter Allen)
18. Michael Jackson – It’s The Falling In Love (1979, with David Foster)
19. Peter Allen – Fly Away (1980, with Peter Allen)
20. Chris Hillman – Heartbreaker (1977, with David Wolfert)
21. Bruce Roberts – Starmaker (1977, with Bruce Roberts)
22. Rod Stewart – That’s What Friends Are For (1982, with Burt Bacharach)
Bonus Tracks:
Randy Crawford – One Hello (1982, with Marvin Hamlisch)
Chaka Khan – Stronger Than Before (1984, with Burt Bacharach & Bruce Roberts)
The Moments – I Don’t Wanna Go (1976, with Bruce Roberts)
Albert Hammond – Moonlight Lady (1976, with Albert Hammond)

GET IT!

More Songbooks:
ABBA
Ashford & Simpson
Barry Gibb Vol. 1
Barry Gibb Vol. 2
Bill Withers
Bob Dylan Volumes 1-5
Brian Wilson
Bruce Springsteen
Burt Bacharach & Hal David Vol. 1
Burt Bacharach & Hal David Vol. 2
Burt Bacharach’s Lesser-Known Songbook
Carole King Vol. 1
Carole King Vol. 2
Chuck Berry
Cole Porter Vol. 1
Cole Porter Vol. 2
Elton John & Bernie Taupin
Holland-Dozier-Holland
John Prine
Jimmy Webb Vol. 1
Jimmy Webb Vol. 2
Jimmy Webb Vol. 3
Lamont Dozier
Laura Nyro
Leonard Cohen
Neil Diamond
Paul McCartney Vol. 1
Paul McCartney Vol. 2
Rod Temperton
Sly Stone
Steely Dan

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