Super Deluxe Edition featuring 2023 Remaster of 1998's Painted From Memory, New Collection Taken From Life featuring Unreleased Songs from the Proposed Musical Score and Live Performances Plus 20-Page Booklet and Detailed Essay by Elvis Costello

The Songs of Bacharach & Costello, brings together all of the published songs that Elvis Costello has written with Burt Bacharach, celebrating the three decade songwriting partnership between them. Compiled by Costello, the Super Deluxe Edition vinyl 2LP + 4CD-set includes the newly remastered album, Painted From Memory, along with a new collection, Taken From Life, featuring unreleased songs from the proposed Painted From Memory musical score, plus live performances, and a detailed 10,000 word essay by Costello.

Those who were surprised by the writers of "I'm Not Angry" and "What's New Pussycat?" working together perhaps overlooked that Bacharach was engaging in musical collaboration for only the second time in his storied career – the first resulting in just a handful of songs musically written with Neil Diamond. It was Costello who wrote the first musical draft of "God Give Me Strength, "communicating from Dublin to Los Angeles by fax – back in the 20th Century – and far from being offended by this presumption, Bacharach sent back an amended copy, laying out the signature intro motif for flugelhorn, adding the expansive bridge section and making all sorts of subtle but crucial amendments to the melodic and rhythmic phrasing of Costello's first draft. This song was a commission for the Allison Anders' motion picture, Grace Of My Heart, and though both song and movie were overlooked by the Academy Awards, the song did place in the Grammy nominations of the following year, as Costello remarked in his book Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink: "To have written a song like "God Give Me Strength" and simply stopped would have been ridiculous."

So began a series of face-to-face songwriting sessions in both California and New York City. Their working methods ranged from one writer responding to the other's opening musical statement to Costello trying to put lyrical substance and definition to a complete Bacharach composition that did not need any such musical reply. By the end of their initial sessions, there were occasions when they were seated across the room at two pianos, writing successive bars of the new tune. Recorded in Hollywood in 1998, the album, Painted From Memory – orchestrated by Bacharach with the exception of the title track which was arranged by the great Johnny Mandel – has gone on to capture an appreciative worldwide audience far beyond its initial release. The song "I Still Have That Other Girl" even managed to wrestle a Grammy away from both Celine Dion and Van Morrison – no easy task in the crowded field of the "Best Collaboration With Vocals" category of the 41st Awards.

The idea that the songs and lovelorn themes of Painted From Memory might be realized on the Broadway stage were perhaps an unlikely prospect, given that, as Costello puts, such a show might feel, "Like Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night" only with less tap-dancing." Nevertheless, this was the belief of dedicated Painted From Memory aficionado and television comedy mogul, Chuck Lorre, who together with Tony Award-winning writer, Steven Sater, set about threading a story through the original folio of songs, creating a tale and set of characters who demanded that Bacharach and Costello write more than a dozen additional songs.

These songs are all found on Taken From Life, opening and closing with "You Can Have Her"and "Look Up Again," arranged by Vince Mendoza and recorded at Capitol Studios, Hollywood in September 2021 under the direction of Bacharach. The Taken From Life collection also brings together performances on which Bacharach led The Imposters for the Grammy winning album, Look Now, and songs from the proposed score from the E.P. Purse and the Decca Records release, The Sweetest Punch, on which guitarist Bill Frisell arranged the then brand new Bacharach/Costello songs for the voice of Cassandra Wilson and the clarinetist, Don Byron. The Taken From Life title track is a 2022 recording with The Imposters produced by Sebastian Keys and the collection is completed by startling and beautiful vocal performances of other songs from the Painted From Memory musical score by Audra Mae and Jenni Muldaur with the piano accompaniment of Jim Cox and Thomas Bartlett, including the tragic, "I Looked Away" and the deranged catalogue song,"Shameless," just two of the 19 previously unreleased tracks included in the set.

Opportunities to see Bacharach and Costello perform on stage were rare. Their 1998 tour opened at Radio City Musical Hall, NYC and closed five shows later at the Royal Festival Hall, London, after just a handful of television and radio appearances. However, Costello and Steve Nieve began the Lonely World Tour – taking its title from a line in the Painted From Memory song, "What's Her Name Today?" – opening with an appearance with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra at Berwaldhallen in Stockholm on the Feast Of The Epiphany, 1999 and proceeded to place the Bacharach/Costello songs central to their concert repertoire from Toronto to Tokyo, and closing in Osaka on December 18th, in a concert in which forty songs were performed. A selection of these performances can be heard on the third disc of the box set: Because It's A Lonely World – Live.

The fourth disc of the box set, Costello Sings Bacharach/David, traces the singer's relationship from that date through a duet with Nick Lowe on "Baby It's You," a version of "Please Stay" recorded in Barbados, all the way to a trio of Bacharach/David classics performed at the Royal Festival Hall in 1999, including "Make It Easy On Yourself," "My Little Red Book," and "Anyone Who Had A Heart." Another studio collaboration yielded a rendition of "I'll Never Fall In Love Again" recorded for the Austin Powers – The Spy Who Shagged Me soundtrack, in which both artists made a cameo appearance. Indeed this in turn led to exploratory workshops with Mike Myers for a possible stage adaptation of Austin Powers and further songwriting sessions with the Bacharach/Costello team completing or sketching up to fifteen more songs, one of which would have been a "secret track" back in this collection in the carefree days before algorithms ruled the waves but which is tucked on the end of the Taken From Life album, in the form of Bacharach's tender and intimate vocal and piano performance of one of the more unexpected drafted subplots – the song of a disillusioned spy entitled: "Lie Back And Think Of England."

The comprehensive 45-song set also includes live performances of Bacharach and Costello performing several of the songs from Painted From Memory, as well as other beloved Bacharach numbers, with orchestras in New York and London; Costello performing stripped down versions of the songs on his Lonely World Tour with Nieve (the classically trained pianist and keyboard player in both The Attractions and The Imposters); and a selection of Bacharach and Hal David songs Costello has performed and recorded over the years, including "I'll Never Fall In Love Again," which Bacharach and Costello famously performed together on screen in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

Housed in a lavish 12.75" x 12.5" box, the expansive set features a 20-page booklet with photography from William Claxton and Rankin, in and out of the studio, early drafts of lyrics, studio notes, pages from the Painted From Memory musical script, and a newly written 10,000-word essay by Costello that beautifully details his nearly three-decade long friendship and prolific musical partnership with Bacharach, and how influential the legendary songwriter has been throughout his life. Meticulously compiled and thoughtfully sequenced with the invaluable help of compilation producer, Steve Berkowitz, The Songs of Bacharach & Costello is the complete picture of the two songwriters enduring partnership and friendship.