What's it all about, Burt?

I'm not sure how a question about the soundtrack for a film that came out over 40 years ago could qualify as an emergency, but who am I to question anyone's sense of urgency?

Just what the hell the deal is with "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" is that it's the best known song from a film where all the music is awful. It might be the only actual song on the soundtrack; everything else is light, breezy, ambient pop noise that you would associate with a generic tourism commercial for southern California in 1969, where the lyrics consist entirely of "Ba-da-ba-ba-baaa". It's like director George Roy Hill had a meeting with songwriter Burt Bacharach where he told him, "I'm making a film about a pair of wild west outlaws trying desperately to escape to freedom in Bolivia. Now forget everything I just said and make me a soundtrack." Bacharach undoubtedly replied "I have no idea what you're talking about but I have just the thing." The result is a film with a soundtrack that couldn't have been made after 1973.

You can't blame Burt Bacharach though; that's the kind of music he's always made and the powers-that-be who hired him shouldn't or couldn't have wanted anything different. It's not bad music, it just doesn't fit. So did George Roy Hill sabotage his own film? If so, he wouldn't be the only director to ever do that. There are those who believe that Joel Schumacher went out of his way to make "Batman and Robin" the worst Batman film ever just to draw attention away from the fact that most of his movies are terrible.

"Nipples on the Bat suit guy: Yep, that's my everlasting legacy."

Or is it possible that something else is afoot, something far more sinister? We'll see what Jeff has to say about it...