Song Of The Day 3/30/2013: Diana Ross & Marvin Gaye - "The Things I Will Not Miss"

The 1973 musical remake of the Shangri-La story Lost Horizon was universally declaimed as one of the worst films of all time. I can tell you it's not very good (Peter Finch as the lead in a musical? John Gielgud cast as "Chang"?). The songs were by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Not long after its release there was a palpable backlash against Bacharach in general, and although the rise of harder rock music was the primary reason for that, his involvement in Lost Horizon certainly didn't help. Thankfully Bacharach's genius was rediscovered and revisited a couple of decades later, and the movie itself faded from most memories, except mine, dammit. (It's not available on DVD or Netflix.)

Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye recorded a duet of a song from Lost Horizon, "The Things I Will Not Miss." It might be the strangest thing ever made under the Motown banner. It was left off the first pressings of the Diana & Marvin album, which had a checkered history itself. There's some charm in it, though: Marvin keeping up with the pace of a quick-tempo show tune, Diana interjecting some out-of-sync spoken responses, the wholly inappropriate fuzz-guitar intro. Have fun with this. Someone has to.