Anyone Who Had a Heart

Song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David and originally recorded by Dionne Warwick.

Dionne Warwick version

‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ was presented to Dionne Warwick in unfinished form while she, Burt Bacharach and Hal David were rehearsing in Bacharach’s Manhattan apartment for an upcoming recording session. Bacharach had finished the score which, in his words, “changes time signature constantly, 4/4 to 5/4, and a 7/8 bar at the end of the song on the turnaround. It wasn’t intentional, it was all just natural. That’s the way I felt it.” This was the first use of polyrhythm in popular music. However David had written only about a third of the lyric and was reluctant to finalize the sixth line of the first stanza as “And know I dream of you” feeling the stress was unnatural (as opposed to “And know I dream of you”). Bacharach played a snippet of the tune for Warwick who was enraptured and at her urging David left Warwick to rehearse with Bacharach in the living room while he (David) retired to a bedroom where he completed the lyric. Of the unnatural stress in “I dream of you”, David later stated: “I tried to find a way to make the of do something and I could never do it… [I] had to let it go.”

Warwick recorded ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ at Bell Sound Studios in Manhattan in November 1963, in a session produced by Bacharach which also yielded ‘Walk On By’ and ‘In the Land Of Make Believe’. According to published reports, Warwick nailed the tune in only one take – though an alternate remix of the take appears on a compilation album released in 1976 by Springboard International.

Released on the Scepter label in November 1963, ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ became Warwick’s first Top Ten single in January 1964 peaking at number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the USA.

Cilla Black version

A scout for UK record producer George Martin discovered ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ when Warwick’s version took off in the US, suggesting to Martin that the song would be a strong UK single for Shirley Bassey. However Martin saw the song as a vehicle for Cilla Black, the Liverpool vocalist whose obvious star potential had yet to be realized despite her association with the Beatles, her recording of the Lennon-McCartney original “Love of the loved” having been only a modest hit. Martin produced the session for Black’s recording of ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ at Abbey Road Studios; the arrangement was by Johnny Pearson and the session personnel included guitarists Vic Flick and Big Jim Sullivan and the Breakaways vocal group.

Black’s single of “Anyone Who Had a Heart” debuted at number 28 on the UK single chart. The Dionne Warwick original, issued by Scepter’s UK licensee Pye Records debuted on the chart for the following week at number 42; by then Black’s version had reached number 10 ascending in the subsequent two weeks to number 1 while Warwick’s version concurrently ended its chart run with two weeks at number 47. Cilla Black stayed at number one for three weeks. Eventually she sold one million copies of her single.

Black recorded a new version of ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ for her 1993 ‘Through the Years’ album.

Kim Wilde version

Kim Wilde recorded a cover of ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ for her 2011 album Snapshots.

Versions

There are two versions of ‘Anyone who had a heart’: the album version and the ‘mixed but not mastered’ version from the promotional cd of ‘Snapshots’.

Kim about ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’

I don’t know what year, ’62? ’63?, I was only three years old and I remember mum and dad had the radio on in the house and listening to all kinds of fantastic music at thar time. I remember Gene Pitney, the Beatles, The Kinks and all kinds of great music coming out of that box. Anyone who had a heart, there was something about the way Cilla sang it, not Dionne Warwick or anyone else. Heartrending stuff. (1)

In 1964, I was four years old. I was living in London in a semi-detached house with my parents and there was a lot of music being played at home. My dad was sitting around strumming guitars and writing songs. But I remember the radio was on a lot, and this particular song really had a big impact on me. I find it interesting now, I didn’t realise I was quite so young… When I started researching some of the songs that are on the ‘Snapshots’ album I was really staggered to realise that I was so young and yet this song had such a big impact on such a small little person. And so I grew up with this song being like one of those really precious songs that – one of the most precious songs I can think of. So I wasn’t in any rush to record it because I had it in such, I looked up to it so much, on such a pedestal, but when Snapshots came around I just thought ‘this is the time to do this song, if you’re ever gonna have a crack at this song it’s gotta be now or never.’ So I went into the studio with Rick, my brother, and it was quite an emotional thing to do, but we did it (laughs) and I’m so chuffed, I’m so delighted with the way we’ve interpreted that song. It’s just wonderful. It’s real dream come true stuff. So many songs on the album had long journeys to get to the album. They weren’t just picked out randomly, like ‘Oh I fancy that or maybe I’ll do that one.’ There’s real stories to them and I think that what makes the album so special and so special to me. (2)

To be in the studio and singing that was a big emotional day. I had lots of moments that day. The thing I enjoyed most about singing ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ was actually doing all the backing vocals, because all the backing vocals on that song are huge and massive, and really challenging, and I’d always wanted to do them. I’d almost wanted to do the backing vocals more than I’d wanted to sing the song itself. (3)

Credits

Guitars: Ricky Wilde
Keyboards: Ricky Wilde
Additional vocals by Kim Wilde
Produced by Ricky Wilde & Andrew Murray
Vocal production by Ricky Wilde

Interview source

(1) Tracks of my years, BBC Radio 2 (UK), 4 April 2005.
(2) Track by track commentary, Sony Music, 2011.
(3) Unsung Heroes podcast, 23 July 2021