Many view Barry Manilow as the quintessential representative of soft rock and adult contemporary styles, placing him among history’s most commercially triumphant pop acts. During the 1970s he rose to worldwide fame through a succession of singles that fused unabashed emotional directness with polished songwriting and glossy, richly arranged production. His affable, entertainment-industry-fluent persona, shaped by his initial role as musical director for Bette Midler, drew an unusually broad listenership. He saw himself as a classic pop performer and versatile showman, which led to correspondingly dramatic concerts and theatrical stage presentations. Throughout the second half of the decade Manilow ruled the pop landscape more completely than nearly any other artist, generating an extended run of chart successes such as “I Write the Songs,” “Looks Like We Made It,” “Mandy,” and “Copacabana (At the Copa),” together with multiplatinum LPs—including 1978’s Even Now, which reached number three on the Billboard 200—that essentially built the Arista label. As musical preferences shifted in the 1980s he moved into additional idioms, pursuing his longstanding affinity for swing, classic pop standards, and Broadway material. He maintained a steady recording pace over the ensuing decades, and his appeal never fully faded, confirmed by the number-one debut of his 2006 collection of covers, Greatest Songs of the Fifties, and the number-four debut of his more personal 2014 standards set, Night Songs. In 2017 he returned to the Top 20 with This Is My Town: Songs of New York, a tribute to the city that had propelled his early career. In 2023 his 1997 musical Harmony finally reached Broadway, accompanied by a cast-album release.
Barry Manilow entered the world as Barry Alan Pincus on June 17, 1943, in Brooklyn and spent his childhood in the modest Williamsburg neighborhood. His father departed when Barry was two, after which he took his mother’s maiden name, Manilow. He started piano and accordion lessons at age seven; after high school he gained admission to the Juilliard School of Music, financing his studies through employment in the CBS mail room. He later served as musical director for the CBS program Callback and sustained himself for several years by composing, producing, and performing advertising jingles for major campaigns including State Farm, Dr. Pepper, McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and others.
In 1971 he encountered Bette Midler, who engaged him as pianist, arranger, and musical director; he accompanied her on her storied pre-fame tour of New York City’s gay bathhouses, oversaw her first two albums (1972’s The Divine Miss M and its self-titled successor), and introduced some of his own songs during her Carnegie Hall engagement in summer 1972. The association with Midler enabled Manilow to secure his own recording contract with the new Bell label, resulting in the 1973 release of his debut LP, Barry Manilow I. Sales proved modest, and after Bell transitioned into Arista, label chief Clive Davis urged him to cut a pop song titled “Brandy,” previously a British hit for co-writer Scott English. Manilow transformed the track into a ballad and retitled it “Mandy” to prevent confusion with Looking Glass’s “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)”; issued on 1974’s Barry Manilow II, “Mandy” ascended to number one in early 1975. The theatrical follow-up single “It’s a Miracle” reached the Top 20, while a reissued version of the Chopin-based ballad “Could It Be Magic” (from the debut album) climbed into the Top Ten.
With his footing now secure, Manilow delivered a still more accomplished third album, 1975’s Tryin’ to Get the Feeling. “I Write the Songs,” ironically penned by Beach Boys associate Bruce Johnston, became his second number-one pop single in early 1976; paired with the Top Ten title track, the LP attained triple-platinum status. He reinforced his growing stature with This One’s for You, issued late that year, which yielded hits in the title song, the Top Ten “Weekend in New England,” and the chart-topping “Looks Like We Made It.” In 1977 he issued the live double album Live, his first number-one LP and, at more than four million copies sold, his strongest commercial showing to that point. The same year he received an Emmy for his initial prime-time ABC special, The Barry Manilow Special; the network continued to broadcast Manilow specials for several subsequent seasons. Even Now achieved another triple-platinum mark in 1978; “Can’t Smile Without You,” the disco-inflected “Copacabana,” and “Somewhere in the Night” all entered the Top Ten, the first two signaling a shift away from his customary ballad-driven approach.
Early indications that Manilow’s unbroken run of hits might be ending appeared with 1979’s One Voice; although the set sold strongly and included a Top Ten cover of former Mott the Hoople singer Ian Hunter’s “Ships,” it lacked the consistent songwriting quality of earlier releases. Barry, released in 1980, produced his final Top Ten single, “I Made It Through the Rain.” While he remained an enormously popular global touring attraction and continued to score adult-contemporary successes for a few more years, his peak pop period had concluded. In 1984 he deliberately altered course with 2:00 A.M. Paradise Café, an album of swinging, jazz-inflected originals featuring guest appearances by Mel Tormé, Sarah Vaughan, Shelly Manne, and Gerry Mulligan. Later projects such as 1987’s Swing Street, 1991’s Showstoppers, 1994’s Singin’ with the Big Bands, and 1998’s Manilow Sings Sinatra further examined swing, vocal jazz, and classic pop territory. Additionally, his stage musical Barry Manilow’s Copacabana: The Musical opened in 1994 and toured extensively in the U.S. and U.K.; another musical, Harmony, received its premiere in San Diego in 1997.
Manilow’s extended association with Arista concluded when he moved to the jazz-focused Concord label, debuting there in late 2001 with the concept album Here at the Mayflower, which advanced his progression toward pre-rock pop styling. He began to reappear in the broader public consciousness in 2002 by performing “Let Freedom Ring” at the Super Bowl pre-game show; bolstered by television promotion, Ultimate Manilow entered the album charts at number three that March. A DVD edition of the collection followed, along with the two-disc live set 2 Nights Live drawn from a New Jersey weekend engagement. In 2005 Manilow returned to the studio with producer and music executive Clive Davis to record a wide-ranging selection of 1950s material. The resulting Greatest Songs of the Fifties, a project of genuine passion, surprised observers by topping the charts in early 2006. A follow-up, The Greatest Songs of the Sixties, appeared at year’s end and peaked at number two, paving the way for The Greatest Songs of the Seventies in 2007 and The Greatest Songs of the Eighties in 2008. A holiday album, In the Swing of Christmas, surfaced in 2007 and reappeared in an expanded 2009 edition containing two bonus tracks.
Manilow next collaborated with producer Michael Lloyd on 2010’s The Greatest Love Songs of All Time, then issued the concept album 15 Minutes one year later, chronicling a musician’s rapid ascent and subsequent decline. The 2014 studio release Night Songs presented an intimate collection of standards performed solely with piano and upright bass; warmly received, it reached number four on the Billboard 200 and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album.
Manilow promptly followed Night Songs with My Dream Duets, a set of electronic pairings with departed vocalists he admired; issued on Verve in late October 2014, the album generated considerable attention. That same year he married his longtime partner and manager Garry Kief. In April 2017 he honored his hometown with This Is My Town: Songs of New York, interpreting a blend of original compositions and standards. A sequel to Night Songs, Night Songs II, arrived in February 2020 and again featured Manilow delivering spare, piano-and-vocal interpretations of Great American Songbook material.
Following earlier productions in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and off-Broadway, his 1997 musical Harmony finally premiered on Broadway in November 2023. The work drew inspiration from the real-life ascent of the German close-harmony ensemble the Comedian Harmonists, active in the late 1920s and 1930s. The 2022 off-Broadway mounting received multiple Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations and won Outstanding Off-Broadway Musical from the Off-Broadway Alliance. With music by Manilow and book and lyrics by Bruce Sussman, the Broadway cast album was released in advance on Ghostlight in August 2023.
