Dionne Warwick’s career spans almost 60 years, longer than many of today’s biggest music stars have been alive. She scored her first hit in 1962 with “Don’t Make Me Over,” her first solo single after breaking out from her family’s gospel and R&B singing group, and she last made the charts in 1998 with a version of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David standard “What the World Needs Now Is Love.” In between, she racked up dozens of hits across multiple decades, including “I Say a Little Prayer,” “Then Came You,” “I’ll Never Love This Way Again” and her signature song “That’s What Friends Are For.”
Warwick started releasing hits in the early rock and R&B era, working with songwriters Bacharach and David on her 1960s singles, and she maintained her popularity even as musical tastes shifted, collaborating with disco-era stars like Barry Manilow and Barry Gibb of The Bee Gees in the ’70s. She then achieved possibly her biggest success in the ’80s when “Friends” on which she was joined by Elton John, Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder (billed as Dionne and Friends), became a massive pop-culture sensation, ending 1986 as the No. 1 single of the year and raising millions of dollars for AIDS research.
Warwick, who received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grammys in 2019, will showcase hits from throughout her career in the latest dates of her Caesars Palace residency, in the intimate atmosphere of Cleopatra’s Barge. She’s been performing in Vegas since 1969 when she headlined at The Sands, and she knows exactly how to keep a Vegas crowd entertained with songs that have become timeless. “All of the music that has been written for me to record, I love them all,” she told Las Vegas Magazine before launching this new residency. “They’re like my babies.”
Caesars Palace, 8 p.m. Jan. 19 and 23-26, starting at $94.99 plus tax and fee. 702.777.2782
