Creator of music that was catchy but complex – Burt Bacharach dies aged 94

It’s almost easier to list the smash hit songs of the 60s and 70s that he didn’t write than those he did.

The prolifically successful composer Burt Bacharach, who has died aged 94, created hit after hit including ‘Say a Little Prayer’ and ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” for singers as diverse as Dione Warwick, Sir Tom Jones and The Carpenters.

He rejected the idea that his pop songs were ‘easy listening’, saying that they were anything but ‘easy’.

With their jazz-infused chord structures and shifting time schemes they were impossible to resist.