B.J. Thomas

Some songs become part of the air itself, so much so that you forget somebody had to sing them. "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" is one of those: that light, sunlit melody that says, more or less, that even though the rain is falling on my head, I refuse to be sad, I'm going to be fine. It is one of the most optimistic songs pop has ever produced, and the warm, effortless voice holding it up belonged to a Texan named B.J. Thomas. A voice built to console.

The movie song, and the Oscar

"Raindrops" was born for the screen: Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote it for the film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", in 1969. Bacharach wanted a voice that sounded relaxed, almost carefree, to play against the adventure on screen, and B.J. Thomas delivered exactly that. The song went to number one in the United States and won the Academy Award for best original song. A track about keeping your smile in the rain, crowned with the most important statuette in cinema.

That was his specialty: making the hard things sound light. He didn't sing to show off; he sang to keep you company. And there is something deeply generous in that, in a voice that isn't trying to impress you but to make you feel better.

The other song, the one that became something else

B.J. Thomas also recorded, in 1968, the original of "Hooked on a Feeling", a pop ballad of pure infatuation. Years later a Swedish band, Blue Swede, picked it up and turned it into that version with the "ooga-chaka" chant everybody knows from movies and memes. Few people know that underneath that catchy oddity there is a beautiful song first recorded by this soft-voiced Texan. The same old story again: the strange version buries the original, and the original was worth hearing.

More than a one-note singer

What makes him bigger is that he didn't stay in pop. B.J. Thomas crossed into country and, above all, into gospel music, where he won several Grammy Awards singing about his faith. One single voice that could put optimism into Hollywood's rain, tell country stories and lift religious hymns. That range — moving between worlds without losing the warmth — belongs to a real performer, not to a passing fashion.

He died in 2021, at seventy-eight, of lung cancer. One of those voices you didn't know you loved until it was gone, and one that still plays every time it rains and somebody decides, against everything, not to be sad.

What to remember

B.J. Thomas was the warm voice behind "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", the optimistic song from "Butch Cassidy" that won an Oscar. He recorded the original of "Hooked on a Feeling" before it became a strange phenomenon in another voice. And he crossed from pop into country and gospel with the same ease, winning Grammys for his music of faith.

Remember him this way: there were voices built to dazzle, and voices built to keep you company. B.J. Thomas's was the second kind, and that is why it still consoles. The next time the rain falls on your head and you decide not to be sad, he's right there.

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Sources

B.J. Thomas (Billy Joe Thomas), American singer born on 7 August 1942 in Hugo, Oklahoma, and raised in Texas; he died on 29 May 2021 at the age of seventy-eight, from complications of lung cancer. "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David for the film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969), reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the Academy Award for best original song. In 1968 he recorded the original version of "Hooked on a Feeling", later covered with enormous success by the Swedish band Blue Swede (1974). Over the course of his career he crossed from pop into country and gospel music, in which he won several Grammy Awards. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia, Variety, The Globe and Mail, NPR, Deadline and other coverage.