Politics & Power Quote by Burt Bacharach

Self-mythology usually comes coated in triumph; Burt Bacharach goes the other way, starting his origin story with a flop. "I was terrible" is a blunt, almost comic anti-flex that does two things at once: it punctures the romance of effortless genius, and it quietly asserts the harder truth of craft. By admitting he "couldn't keep time" - the most basic musical competency - he frames his later sophistication not as fate but as an earned transformation. The subtext is less self-pity than calibration: if even Bacharach began with bad rhythm, the line between amateur and master is training, obsession, and patience.

The McGill jab is sharper than it looks. Calling it a "lousy music school" isn't just personal candor; it's a little class critique and a glimpse of postwar musical gatekeeping, when "serious" institutions still treated American popular forms like a rowdy cousin at the table. His aside that they were taking "American music students" reads like a backdoor admission to a world that didn't fully legitimize the kind of music he'd later help define. It's also a sly acknowledgement of luck and institutional happenstance - the unglamorous bureaucracy behind big careers.

Context matters because Bacharach became synonymous with elegance: complex harmonies hiding inside songs that felt effortless. This quote works because it reveals the secret engine behind that ease. He isn't lowering expectations; he's showing that taste, persistence, and humility can be a composer's real origin story.