Songfacts®:

• This song from the swingin' '60s was written by the team of Burt Bacharach and Hal Davis for Peter Sellers' character in the movie What's New Pussycat?
  
  Written by Woody Allen, the movie stars Peter O'Toole as a guy flocked by beautiful women, all of whom he calls "pussycat." Sellers plays a psychiatrist he sees for help, but who ends up causing problems.
  
  Bacharach explained how the song came together in his memoir Anyone Who Had A Heart: "I came up with the melody for 'What's New Pussycat?' by watching how bizarre and brilliantly weird Peter Sellers' character was in the movie. The music was a direct transfer of what I was him doing on screen. I went to the piano and played these kind of Kurt Weill-ish, angular off-center chords that just felt so right for what I was seeing."
  
  After Bacharach wrote the music, Hal David wrote the lyric.
• In a Record Collector interview, Burt Bacharach discussed writing songs for movies: "I think if you've got a theme like 'What's New Pussycat?' and that music comes from watching Peter Sellers and his craziness in that movie and you're trying to make it that way and out words to it. Then you get Tom Jones to sing it, you get lucky. Here was a theme, which was basically an instrumental, and if it's a good melody you'll always fit words."
• This song is intentionally outrageous, with Tom Jones telling a girl to powder her pussycat nose so he can kiss her "sweet little pussycat lips." At the time, Jones was developing an image as a ribald pop star, and this song played right into it. Here's a quote from 1987: "Most songs are about the relationship between men and women, and so sex is involved. I act it out as best I can."
  
  Burt Bacharach knew he had the chops to convey the right tone in the song, and convinced Jones to do it. "When I first heard it I thought, Christ! What the bloody hell do they want me to sing this for?" Jones told Q magazine. "But Burt Bacharach explained, I want the big voice to sing this bloody crazy song, and you put it on, it's a classic."
• When Elvis first heard Tom Jones sing this, he assumed the singer was black.
• "What's New Pussycat?" has been used in various movies over the years, typically for comedic scenes involving cats. It shows up in the 2000 movie Meet The Parents and in its 2010 sequel Little Fockers to play on the mishaps of Jinx the cat. Other films to use the song include:
  
  Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (2012)
  Cats And Dogs (2001)
  Ratcatcher (1999)
  Paulie (1998)
  Father Of The Bride (1991)
  Cat People (1982)
• "What's New Pussycat?" was a big step forward for both Tom Jones and the song's writers, Burt Bacharach and Hal Davis. Jones had a big hit earlier in 1965 with "It's Not Unusual"; "What's New Pussycat?" showed a cheeky side of his singing that helped him land the gig singing the theme to the James Bond movie Thunderball.
  
  Bacharach and Davis had recently started working with Dionne Warwick, who turned their songs "Don't Make Me Over" and "Walk On By" into hits. "What's New Pussycat?" earned them more work on movies, fitting as Bacharach was dating the famous actress Angie Dickinson, whom he later married. Other films they wrote songs for include Alfie and Casino Royale.