Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over

Year: 2021

Actors: Marty Feldman, Freddie Mercury, Burt Bacharach, Johnny Carson

Duration: 95 min

Primarily through interviews with colleagues and the subject herself, a profile of singer Dionne Warwick is presented largely focusing on her career. She is arguably most renowned for her distinctive voice, and being the first black performer to break the color barrier successfully into the realm of pop music primarily in her collaborations with the songwriting team of composer Burt Bacharach and lyricist Hal David, whose complex material as pop music goes could only have been interpreted by someone like trained Warwick who has an understanding of music. The hurdles she had to overcome in being a black woman in a white male dominated genre of music and some in the black music business arguing that she sold out are discussed, and thus she at the time never fitting into either fully. She talks about her strong views of what she likes and doesn't like for herself musically. Not liking the genre, she thought about quitting the business during the disco era, it when a "disco" collaboration with Barry Gibb and Maurice Gibb of The Bee Gees produced one her her biggest hits. She also talks about calling out the misogyny of the gangsta rap of the 1990s. The gangsta rap issue touches upon her activism, most notably with the AIDS crisis, 100% of the royalties of the hit song "That's What Friends Are For" which has gone toward AIDS research. The negatives of her life are also discussed, including the backlash against her for her association to the Psychic Friends Network, having to deal with a bankruptcy and its stigma regardless of the reason, and attending more than one too many funerals before their time of family members, most notably first cousin Whitney Houston.—Huggo

Genre: Biography   Documentary   Music