“What The World Needs Now” by Jackie DeShannon

Jackie DeShannon was the first to record "What the World Needs Now Is Love", the Burt Bacharach and Hal David song, and she was the one who made it a hit. Imperial Records put it out on April 15, 1965, after a Liberty release planned for the month before was scrapped, and by July it had climbed to number seven on the Hot 100; in Canada it went all the way to number one.

It sounds effortless, but it wasn't. Bacharach later wrote in his 2014 autobiography that the words were among the hardest David ever wrote: the two had the melody and chorus, set in waltz time, by 1962, and it took David another two years to crack the lyric. Once he had the verses, they wrapped it up in a day or two. DeShannon's 1965 recording went into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.