Earworms: God Give Me Strength by Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach

The 90s never got better than this one

Maybe I was washed out

Like a lip-print on his shirt

See, I’m only human

I want him to hurt

Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach first collaborated on this song as an assignment to write a spectacular song for the film Grace of My Heart which came out in 1996. The story in the movie is about a songwriter in the 1960s loosely based on Carole King, but who stands in for almost all the Brill Building writers and their influences. “God Give Me Strength” is presented as a stand-in for “River Deep Mountain High,” the Phil Spector-produced Ike & Tina Turner classic record that went nowhere in the pop charts crossed with Smile, the Beach Boys album that never was because Brian Wilson’s genius was becoming unstable. In the film, Illeana Douglas plays the character who wrote the song, and because it fundamentally misunderstood the ambitions of songwriters of the early 60s, she had to sing it herself – Douglas’s vocals were dubbed by Kristen Vigard.

I forget, because I haven’t seen this movie since it was new, whether the Costello version of the song was played over the closing credits or not, but it was definitely on the soundtrack. It was instantly my favorite song of its time and remains one of my very favorite songs ever. As I recall, Costello and Bacharach did a lot of their collaborating on this song over the telephone – back in the olden days when that sort of thing cost real money. But they obviously enjoyed each other’s talents. Costello had performed Bacharach’s “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself” all the way back in 1978, as documented on the Stiffs Live compilation album found often in the cheaper record bins to this day, and well worth picking up. (The Rockpile version of “I Knew the Bride” is for the ages.) And he had done “Please Stay,” an early and lesser-known Bacharach number performed originally by the Drifters on his all-covers release, Kojak Variety. He was a fan who had absorbed many of Bacharach’s stylistic quirks into his own amalgamation of all great pop music tropes.

The upshot is, as Costello said in his memoir Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink, “To have written a song like “God Give Me Strength” and simply stopped would have been ridiculous.” Bacharach was still young, in his late 60s (younger than Costello is now) and he and Costello came up with an album’s worth of songs, Painted From Memory, released in 1998. Honestly, the album was something of a let-down for me at the time, as nothing else was as spectacular as “God Give Me Strength,” or, for that matter, as some of my fave songs from Costello’s previous final record with the Attractions, All This Useless Beauty. Many people point to the song “Toledo,” though, as extremely noteworthy, and “I Still Have That Other Girl” has always stuck in my head. I actually think I should sit down with this album and give it a fresh listen after all this time.

Bacharach, who passed away last week at the age of 94, was one of the greatest pop musicians of the 20^thCentury. Heavily influenced by romantic classical music of the 19^th Century, with some jazz chords absorbed from the 1950s, and a penchant for changing up rhythms within a tune, he had some 80 top 40 pop hits, mostly between 1962 and 1971, and wrote dozens of others that should have been big. Dionne Warwick was his greatest interpreter, but he also turns up in discographies of Dusty Springffeld, Tom Jones, Gene Pitney, the Carpenters, and many others. Bacharach was not a lyricist – he came up with these ingenious tunes, and his partners – most notably Hal David among many others – had to find words to fit the often convoluted melodies. You try finding an instrumental version of “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” or “Promises Promises” and see if you can come up with your own lyrics.

In working with Costello, though, Bacharach was faced with a musician whose melodic sense was as complex and memorable as his own. Costello is also famous for writing difficult lyrics, made up of dense forests of words, images, metaphors, puns, and other elements. The combination of these two artists sounds enough like each of them individually to show that this was a true partnership, a connection between two people who knew how much they were impressing each other. That said, it’s fairly obvious that Bacharach took control of the musical arrangements.

“God Give Me Strength” is a simpler song than many of Costello’s others, at least lyrically. This is the tale of a man (or woman, in the case of the film’s version) who has been dumped for another, and who has zero compassion for the person who took his place. Of course, it being Costello, it’s ambiguous enough to also possibly just be rampant paranoia taking over when the beloved object doesn’t call at the expected time. Either way, Costello’s vocal shows he’s at the end of his rope. Along the way, he croons with the dreams of last hope, he shifts to falsetto when he wants to convey despair, and he belts at the top of his lungs the passionate desire for the other to be destroyed. Bacharach’s arrangement, with flugelhorns, alto flute, thick strings, and piano (played by Bacharach himself), bass, and drums leading the way, echoes the feelings of pain in the vocals. And the melody is ridiculously gorgeous.

The introduction is evocative. A simple enticing tune played in unison by two flugelhorns over a gently pulsing bass guitar, tip-tapping hi-hat, quiet piano chords with short melodic filaments,  then ends with a slight guitar chord as the pattern gets ready to repeat. Now the strings join in. They drop out, the piano, bass, and drums continue, and Costello caresses the essential lament: “Now I have nothing so God give me strength.” He stays cool for the next lines: “’Cos I’m weak in her wake / And if I’m strong I might still break.” The melody changes, climbing up as he sings, “And I don’t have anything to share / That I won’t throw into the air.”

This brings us to the chorus, an increasingly intense bout of recrimination and regret. “That song is sung out / This bell is rung out / She was the light that I’d bless / She took my last chance at happiness.” A run on the piano leads into these words, there is an organ joining in the background, vibes tap on the falsetto title lines, the flugelhorns gently remind us of the opening theme, a few bass notes drop back to the original key. The strings are present again for the second verse, as is the organ. “I can’t hold on to her, God give me strength / When the phone doesn’t ring / And I’m lost in imagining / Everything that kind of love is worth / As I tumble back down to the earth.” Costello sounds ever more desperate by the end of these lines and into the chorus. His vibrato adds some luster to the last words in the chorus.

The bridge! Holy moley! This bridge is one of the great moments in pop music history. The strings swell up after the opening line, “God if she’d grant me her indulgence and decline.” Costello belts out like he’s singing an aria in an opera, “I might as well wipe her from my memory / Fracture the spell as she becomes my enemy.” Then the piano chords and with a couple long high bass notes below come back to the forefront: “Maybe I was washed out like a lip print on a shirt,” he sings in a very matter-of-fact voice. “See I’m only human,” he builds up as the strings join in. The drums add a level of power with heavy syncopation.. “I want him to hurt.” He stretches out that last word across several notes, rising up with more and more anger, reinforced by the strings and drums, with what sounds like a tympani role at the end. “I want him” Full stop. Hard drum drop. Vocal and strings shout out, “I want him to hurt,” this time with multiple notes heading downward on the last word, and a piano glissando down the keyboard  before the strings take over the melody of the verse, alternating with those flugelhorns.

There’s one more pair of lines sung at the end of the verse: “Since I lost the power to pretend / That there could ever be a happy ending.” Back to the chorus. This time, there’s no falsetto on the “God give strength” lines, no real hope, just a deathly understanding that it’s over. The flugelhorns and strings take us out, as Costello vamps a little, and the record ends. Over six minutes have passed, and it sounds as though we’ve been through the whole experience of the relationship ending (or, as I said, the phone not ringing). Every note, every musical decision has contributed to the feeling of the song. But it’s not just an exercise in emotional connection – these melodies, these instrumental comments, are dynamic, intriguing, fully developed on their own. It’s among the most perfect records I’ve ever heard.

Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach worked together now and then in the last 25 years. They were trying to put together a Broadway musical for a while, and a new box set, including all the Painted From Memory sessions, is due out soon. In fact, the day after Bacharach died, a previously unheard song, “You Can Have Her,” recorded in 2021, was released online with little fanfare, out of respect. It’s sort of the anti-“God Give Me Strength,” as far as point of view is concerned, though I think it’s more complex than it seems on first listen.