Dionne Warwick Needed Convincing To Record This Hit Penned by the Brothers Gibb

One act had recently scaled dizzying heights in pop music, only to suddenly find themselves unloved and unwanted. The other had gone through a long dry spell but had resuscitated her career in a hurry. The Bee Gees were going down, and Dionne Warwick was going up. They passed each other long enough to collaborate on Warwick’s 1983 Top 10 hit, “Heartbreaker”.

Behind the Scenes Bee Gees

The Brothers Gibb didn’t lick their wounds long. They simply realized they had to pivot. When the 80s dawned and disco plummeted out of favor, the Bee Gees were considered relics of a past era by radio programmers. Their 1981 album Living Eyes flopped, leaving them without a paddle in terms of their own music.

But they had other options. Considering the success that Barry Gibb enjoyed writing songs and co-producing the Barbra Streisand album Guilty in 1980, they realized that they could do their work behind the scenes for other artists. That’s where they put their concentration in the first half of the decade.

In the early 80s, Barry met with record exec Clive Davis, who asked the Bee Gee what other artist he might like to join for an album-length collaboration, as he’d done with Streisand. Gibb immediately mentioned Dionne Warwick.

Warwick’s Hesitation

If anyone could appreciate what the Gibbs were going through, it was Warwick. After churning out hit after hit in the 60s, she spent most of the decade trying to find her footing. The melancholy ballads and frothy pop songs that were her strong point had fallen out of fashion.

But then, in 1979, the musical winds shifted back towards her. Warwick bounced back to the Top 5 with, you guessed it, a melancholy ballad (“I’ll Never Love This Way Again”). When she heard of Barry Gibb’s interest in working with her, she jumped at the chance to keep the momentum rolling. There was just one problem. She disliked the song that Barry was pushing on her for a potential first single from the album, a song called “Heartbreaker”.

Robin and Maurice Gibb had written “Heartbreaker” with Barry. Maurice later lamented that the brothers gave the song away. After much persistence, Warwick decided to heed Barry’s advice and record it. Good thing, as the song landed at No. 10.

Behind the Lyrics of “Heartbreaker”

“Heartbreaker” comes from the perspective of someone whose lover isn’t as thoughtful or as present as they should be. “How can I love you when you’re not around?” Warwick laments. Compare this to the narrator’s own dedication: “I made a life out of loving you.” She finds she can’t move on. “I could be searching my world for a love everlasting,” she muses. “Feeling no pain, when will we meet again?”

She wonders if it’s time to cut her losses. “Tell me when do we try?” she asks. “Or should we say goodbye?” In the refrain, she directly confronts him: “Why do you have to be a heartbreaker?” But she ends on a note of hope, even if that hope might not be warranted: “This world may end, not you and I.”

So sound a pop concoction is “Heartbreaker” that we wonder if, had the Bee Gees released it, they might have escaped pop purgatory. But there’s no doubt that the song was ideal for Dionne Warwick, even if it took a while for her to believe it.

(Photo by Jean-Jacques BERNIER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)