Review: They're Playing Our Song

They're Playing Our Song by Carole Bayer Sager
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Bayer Sager wrote the lyrics for the stage musical They're Playing Our Song, which was loosely based on her relationship with Marvin Hamlisch. However, that musical and its background is just part of one chapter of this book. Basically, there is a chapter on every significant relationship and marriage in her life, including:

* She married record-producer Andrew Sager in 1970, and they divorced in 1978.
* On April 3, 1982, she married composer and pianist Burt Bacharach after over a year's co-habitation. The couple adopted an infant son, whom they named Cristopher Elton Bacharach and divorced in 1991.
* Since June 1996, Bayer Sager has been married to Robert Daly, former chairman of Warner Brothers and former chairman

Mere dates and less serious relationships get covered, including those with George Lucas, Davy Jones of The Monkees. Not all the relationships covered are intimate, some are mostly professional although there always seems to be a blend with her. On the more professional side, there is writing songs with Bob Dylan and a neurotifcally shy Michael Jackson.

More than a songwriter history, this feels more like a romance history. It does cover her career from her first pop hit, "A Groovy Kind of Love", with Toni Wine (Bayer Sager prefers writing partnerships), to "The Prayer (theme from Quest for Camelot)", performed famously by Céline Dion and Andrea Bocelli.

More detail is about how she enters relationships with her own fears and insecurities about her weight and shape and height. This includes a lot of first-sex details with men. She often has been concerned she is being taken advantage of for her songwriting abilities, which perhaps was the case with a porn-addicted Bacharach. She characterized this relationship as abusive, albeit not physically.

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