Barry Manilow Reveals the Stories Behind His Greatest Hits
Barry Manilow Parade Cover Story
Barry Manilow, who recently turned 80, is a hit-making master showman. He's released nearly 60 singles, including a bucketful that were No. 1, Top 10 and Top 40 radio hits (“Mandy,” “Looks Like We Made It” and “Copacabana,” among others). He’s been honored with nearly every award possible, including a Grammy, a Tony and an Emmy (actually, two of them). And he was even nominated for an Oscar, for “Ready to Take a Chance Again,” a song he performed for the soundtrack of the 1978 Chevy Chase/Goldie Hawn comedy Foul Play. Billboard magazine has called him as the No. 1 Adult Contemporary entertainer of all time.
With credentials like that, an artist is bound to have some interesting behind-the-scenes stories. Ahead, Manilow (this week's Parade cover star), walks us through 11 of his best songs.
The Stories Behind Marry Manilow's Songs
1. “Sweetwater Jones” (1973) Written by Barry Manilow
One of the first of Manilow’s original songs he ever recorded and released, it was a standout cut on his very first album, Barry Manilow, making a favorable impression with reviewers. The industry publication Radio & Records noted its “Elton John-ish” vibe, about a young man leaving his former life and heading to the country, bidding goodbye to “the old grindstone” of New York City. “I don’t know why I wrote that song,” says Manilow, who admits he never really dreamed, musically or otherwise, about trading city life for the sticks. “But it has a great little honky-tonk feel to it. I’ve always liked it.”
2. “Mandy” (1974) Written by Scott English and Richard Kerr
Manilow’s breakout hit had previously been recorded by Bunny Walters, a New Zealand singer, and by Scott English, its cowriter. And “Mandy” was originally “Brandy.” Manilow changed the name—and the title—to avoid confusion with another recent radio smash, “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)” by Looking Glass. He recorded his vocal and piano part in one take, with a band and small orchestra added later. "I found the love song hiding inside English’s version," Manilow says, noting that he softened up the original, more rockin’ version. And the “hidden” love song found a huge audience, becoming his first No. 1 hit, rocketing its sweet way up the charts and through the crowded 1974 radio maze of Jethro Tull’s “Bungle in the Jungle,” Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Call Me the Breeze” and “Autobahn” by Kraftwerk.
3. “It’s a Miracle” (1974) Written by Barry Manilow and Marty Panzer
Marty Panzer, Manilow’s first songwriting partner, would later team with him for more than two dozen other songs, including the hits “Even Now” and “This One’s for You.” This song—about an entertainer on the road who has sorely missed his lover—marks Manilow’s first (partially) self-written hit, and he’s used it for years to kick off his concerts. “It’s the greatest opening song ever,” he says. “I’ve tried other songs to open my shows with, and they just don’t work as well.” It hit No. 1 in April 1975.
Related: Steve Miller Shares the Stories Behind the Songs
4. “Could It Be Magic” (1975) Written by Adrienne Anderson and Barry Manilow
“One of my proudest moments,” says Manilow of the song that started as a riff on a classical prelude by Frédéric Chopin, with lyrics added later by Anderson, who would also become a frequent collaborator. Manilow recorded it initially in the early ‘70s when he was part of a band of studio musicians called Featherbed, produced by Tony (“Knock Three Times”) Orlando. But he didn’t much care for Orlando’s arrangement, a bubble-gummy track accented with a clanging cowbell, and the Featherbed version didn’t take wing.
Manilow was later able to refashion the song the way he’d intended it, as an intense, eight-minute opus of impassioned longing, for his first album. But it languished there as a mostly undiscovered gem until it was rereleased to much greater acclaim three years later, in 1975, on his second LP, Barry Manilow II. Before releasing it as a single, the record company chopped it down into a three-minute alternative version to make it more palatable for airplay. When DJs started spinning the shorter version, spurred by calls from fans who loved it on his first album, it became Manilow’s third Top 10 hit.
And the song had legs: Disco diva Donna Summer made it into a dance hit in 1976, and the British band Take That had a version in the ‘90s that won them an award as the British single of the year. It’s been used in TV shows including Doctor Who and Moonlighting, and in the movie Looking for Mr. Goodbar. “I’m pretty proud of that young kid who wrote ‘Could It Be Magic’,” says Manilow.
5. “I Write the Songs” (1975) Written by Bruce Johnston
Yes, Manilow proclaims, “I write the songs that make the whole world sing…” Only he didn’t write this song, just as he didn’t write several of his big hits, which he’s spent a lot of breath explaining over the years. This song came from Bruce Johnson, a member of the Beach Boys, and was previously recorded by Captain & Tennille and teeny-bop heartthrob David (The Partridge Family) Cassidy.
When Manilow’s producer, Clive Davis, presented “I Write the Songs” to him, he resisted. “I said, ‘I can’t do that. People are going to think I’m bragging about how I write all the songs in the world.’” But as he studied the lyrics, he better understood what they were saying: “It’s really an anthem to the spirit of music,” from the point of view of music as an entity, using the singer as a vessel for the message (“I am music, and I write the songs”). It became Manilow’s third No. 1 hit and won Johnston a Grammy for writing it in 1977, beating out competition that included Neal Sedaka’s “Breaking Up is Hard to Do,” the Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight” and Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
6. “Tryin’ to Get the Feeling Again” (1975) Written by David Pomeranz
Writer David Pomeranz originally recorded this gorgeous, stately ballad, inspired by the emotions of a stressful time in his marriage. “I’m glad David still talks to me and forgives me,” says Manilow, “because I rearranged his whole song. It’s one of my favorite records that I’ve ever made.” Manilow’s song surgery on the tune involved removing one part and making another the song’s repeating chorus and hook (“I’ve been up, down, tryin’ to get the feelin’ again”). “That’s the way I heard it,” he says. And if you want to hear the version that he didn’t do, he suggests you check out The Carpenters’ version on their 1995 Interpretations album.
7. “This One’s for You” (1976) By Barry Manilow and Marty Panzer
Panzer’s second hit collaboration with Manilow was the title track of his fourth solo album and became his fifth No. 1 single on the Adult Contemporary chart. “I grew up with Marty,” says Manilow, “and when he brought me the lyric and read it to me, it was like a poem.” Manilow was sold, he says, after Panzer read him the opening line, “This one’ll never sell,” setting up the achingly personal-sounding story—about a guy singing his heart out for an old flame, knowing that his very special song won’t be a radio hit but hoping his old lover will somehow hear it regardless (“wherever you are”). But listeners were sold on the song and it helped the album go platinum, passing one million in sales in January of the following year. Shirley Bassey and Teddy Pendergrass later released their own versions of the tune.
8. “Weekend in New England” (1976) Written by Randy Edelman
“It’s an odd song,” Manilow says, “because it’s in three-quarter time, like a waltz, and the title is never mentioned in the lyrics.” An unlikely radio hit for those reasons; he told one interviewer he was “stunned that [it] became a hit.” But it became his fifth Top 10. The lovely, lilting romantic ballad about love, longing and nostalgia paints Boston and autumn in picturesque descriptions of distant memories. The song’s many references to the seaside and water are so specific, Manilow notes, they might not work in any other setting. “I guess you could have a ‘Weekend in Miami,’” he says, “but it doesn’t have the same ring.”
The song was later recorded by Jim Nabors, Roger Whittaker, Vera Lynn and Gary Puckett, and country star Reba McEntire’s 1986 single “Whoever’s in New England” was its “answer” song, presented from the perspective of a woman who just knows her man is having a weekend fling up there. Edelman, who began his career in the pit orchestras of Broadway plays, went on to become a successful record producer and write scores for Hollywood movies.
9. “Looks Like We Made It” (1977) Written by Richard Kerr and Will Jennings
One of his most misunderstood songs, Manilow points out that “Looks Like We Made It” is “a very sad tale of breaking up, and yet people use it as an anthem, like, at graduation: Looks like we made it!” What the singer of the song has “made it” to, however, is the bittersweet end of a relationship, mulling over how he and his ex have both moved on to other lovers and other things. “People just don’t listen to words,” says Manilow. The song was used in an episode of Friends when Ross spends a reunion day with his former pet monkey. It ended Manilow’s five-year run of No. 1 Billboard singles on the publication’s Hot 100 chart.
10. “Can’t Smile Without You” (1978) Written by Christian Arnold, David Martin and Geoff Morrow
British singer-songwriter Martin got the idea from a greeting card with a frown and a teardrop on the cover, and words that became the title of this No. 1 Adult Contemporary hit. The tune he fashioned with his writing partners was initially recorded by The Carpenters and Engelbert Humperdinck. But it didn’t become a radio hit until Manilow vamped up its “simple” melody, making it “like a happy vaudeville song, with a top hat and cane,” he says, and giving the tune four key changes and a big, rousing, razzmatazz singalong ending. Of all his concert numbers, he notes, “this is one that audiences love the most.”
Related: Willie Nelson Shares the Stories Behind 6 of His Greatest Hits
11. “Copacabana (At the Copa)” (1978) Written by Barry Manilow, Jack Feldman and Bruce Sussman
“’Copa’ wasn’t supposed to be a hit,” says Manilow. “Bruce and I wrote it as the novelty cut” for his Even Now album. Set in the famous New York nightclub of the title, it’s about a showgirl, Lola, her boyfriend, Tony, and a raucous night that turns tragic. “It’s a full story in three verses,” says Manilow, as Tony is shot (and dies), Lola goes insane, 30 years fly by…and the song remains peppy and upbeat, part of its frivolity and “novelty.”
The record label exes scratched their heads over what kind of song it was meant to be, and ultimately didn’t think it could be a hit, either. But as more and more listeners called radio stations to request it from the album, “Copa” became yet another Top 10 hit, earning Manilow his only Grammy, in 1979, for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. And the song, ironically, would turn out to be perhaps his most successful single of all time, and certainly his most widely known. It earned him first gold certification for a single that he wrote or co-wrote. It’s been used in TV episodes of Friends, Glee, ER, Sex and the City and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and in the movies Despicable Me, Pretty in Pink and Foul Play. “Out of all the songs I’ve recorded, it’s what people know best,” he says. “That’s the one.”
