Music / Dionne Warwick

Marie Dionne Warwick (born December 12, 1940 in East Orange, New Jersey) is an American pop and contemporary R&B singer.

Warwick was raised in a New Jersey family heavily associated with gospel choirs, which she and her sister, Dee Dee Warwick, performed in growing up. She was also first cousins with Whitney Houston. Her career took off when she was discovered by composer Burt Bacharach, who initially hired her to record demos for him and lyricist Hal David. This marked the start of a fruitful long-time collaboration, with Bacharach and David writing many of Warwick's biggest hits including "Don't Make Me Over", "Anyone Who Had a Heart", "Walk on By", "Message to Michael", "Alfie", "I Say a Little Prayer", "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?", and "I'll Never Fall in Love Again".

Warwick worked steadily throughout The '60s. Her career stalled a bit during The '70s following a fallout with Bacharach and David,^note although they later reconciled and worked together again but in 1979 she moved to Arista Records, where she would enjoy a resurgence in popularity with hits like "I'll Never Love This Way Again", "Déjà Vu", "Heartbreaker", "Love Power" (with Jeffrey Osborne), and the chart-topping "That's What Friends Are For" (a superteam collaboration with Elton John, Gladys Knight, and Stevie Wonder). Overall one of the most prolific artists of the 20th century, with dozens of albums and numerous hit singles to her credit, Warwick continued to release new music all the way into The New '10s.

An occasional actress, she guested on several shows in The '90s, was on a celebrity season of The Apprentice, and appeared on The Masked Singer. During the 2020s COVID-19 Pandemic she gained a measure of late-career notoriety for being endearingly clueless on Twitter, to the point where an art exhibit dedicated to her account was set up. Yes, really. Warwick's career was detailed in the 2021 documentary Dionne Warwick Dont Make Me Over.

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Dionne Warwick discography and filmography:

Albums

1. Presenting Dionne Warwick
2. Anyone Who Had a Heart
3. Make Way for Dionne Warwick
4. The Sensitive Sound of Dionne Warwick
5. Here I Am
6. Here Where There Is Love
7. On Stage and in the Movies
8. The Windows of the World
9. Dionne Warwick in Valley of the Dolls
10. The Magic of Believing
11. Promises, Promises
12. Soulful
13. I'll Never Fall in Love Again
14. Very Dionne
15. Dionne
16. Just Being Myself
17. Then Came You
18. Track of the Cat
19. Love at First Sight
20. Dionne
21. No Night So Long
22. Friends in Love
23. Heartbreaker
24. How Many Times Can We Say Goodbye
25. Finder of Lost Loves
26. Friends
27. Reservations for Two
28. Dionne Warwick Sings Cole Porter
29. Friends Can Be Lovers
30. Aquarela do Brasil
31. Dionne Sings Dionne
32. Dionne Sings Dionne, Vol. 2
33. My Favorite Time of the Year
34. My Friends & Me
35. Why We Sing
36. Only Trust Your Heart
37. Now
38. Feels So Good
39. She's Back
40. Dionne Warwick & the Voices of Christmas

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Filmography

Film

• The Love Machine as herself (1971)

Television

• Johnny Bravo as herself (1 episode; 1999)
• So Weird as herself (1 episode; 1999)
• Walker, Texas Ranger as Dionne Barry (1 episode; 2000)

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Tropes in her music and stage persona:

• The Cover Changes the Gender: "This Guy's In Love With You", written by Bacharach and David, was first recorded by Herb Alpert and was a #1 hit in 1968. Dionne Warwick's cover "This Girl's In Love With You" charted the next year.
• Christmas Songs: The album Dionne Warwick & the Voices of Christmas (2019) is full of collaborations with other artists to sing Christmas songs.
• Domestic Abuse: "Check Out Time" on Very Dionne, about a woman who escapes her abusive husband and checks into a motel several hundred miles away, uncertain of what she'll do next. The arrangement hints at physical abuse with a few very prominent loud bass drum beats in the bridge.
• Friendship Song: "That's What Friends Are For", a song about the benefits of friendship, written by Bacharach and Carol Bayer Sager and recorded by Warwick, Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Gladys Knight (credited as "Dionne and Friends", and actually a cover of a song originally performed by Rod Stewart on the Night Shift soundtrack). Proceeds from the sales of the single benefited AIDS research.
• Location Song: The Bacharach composition "Do You Know the Way to San José?" about a native of San José who didn't make it in Los Angeles and thus returns to her hometown.
• Lyrical Dissonance: "Do You Know the Way to San José?" is bouncy, with a catchy "wo-wo-wo-wo" background vocal hook, but lyrically it's a sad song about broken dreams and alienation from one's roots.
• Parody Assistance: Was a fan of Saturday Night Live's "The Dionne Warwick Talk Show", where Ego Nwodim portrays her as a lightly self-absorbed old woman who is clueless about today's pop culture. She popped up on the November 6, 2021 version of the skit to be interviewed by her impersonator, even singing a duet with her.
• Pride: In "Walk on By" she begs her old lover to ignore her so she can hang onto this.
  Foolish pride
  That's all that I have left
  So let me hide
  The tears and the sadness you gave me
  When you said goodbye
• Rewritten Pop Version: Both the title song and "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" from Promises, Promises were recorded by Dionne Warwick and became hits during the original run.
• Stage Names: Her birth name is Dione Warrick; Warwick came from an early misspelling.
• Stepford Suburbia: "Paper Mache", written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.
  Twenty houses in a row
  Eighty people watch a TV show
  Paper people, cardboard dreams
  How unreal the whole thing seems
• Temporary Name Change: In 1971, Dionne Warwick added an "e" to the end of her last name on the advice of an astrologer friend, but removed it after a few years.

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