Cynthia Weil, the Grammy-winning lyricist of notable vary and endurance who loved a decades-long partnership with husband Barry Mann and helped write “You’ve Misplaced That Lovin’ Feeling,” “On Broadway,” “Strolling within the Rain” and dozens of different hits, has died. She was 82.
Her dying was confirmed Friday by Interdependence Public Relations, which represents Mann’s daughter, Dr. Jenn Mann. A spokesperson didn’t instantly have additional particulars.
Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, married in 1961, have been one in all common music’s most profitable groups, a part of a exceptional ensemble recruited by impresarios Don Kirshner and Al Nevins and based mostly in Manhattan’s Brill Constructing neighborhood, a couple of blocks from Instances Sq.. With such hit-making combos as Carole King and Gerry Goffin and Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, the Brill Constructing track manufacturing facility turned out most of the greatest singles of the ’60s and past.
Weil and Mann have been key collaborators with producer Phil Spector on songs for the Ronettes (“Strolling within the Rain”), the Crystals (“He’s Positive the Boy I Love”) and different performers, and likewise offered hits for everybody from Dolly Parton to Hanson. “Don’t Know A lot,” a Linda Ronstadt-Aaron Neville duet they helped write, was a prime 5 hit that received a finest pop efficiency Grammy in 1990.
Their most well-known track, a piece of historical past total, was “You’ve Misplaced That Lovin’ Feeling,” an anthem of “blue-eyed soul” produced by Spector as if scoring a tragedy and sung with determined fury by the Righteous Brothers. “You’ve Misplaced That Lovin’ Feeling” topped the charts in 1965 and was lined by quite a few different artists. In keeping with BMI, no different track was performed extra on radio and tv within the twentieth century.
However when Weil and Mann first performed “You’ve Misplaced That Lovin’ Feeling” for the Righteous Brothers, the response from singers Invoice Medley and Bobby Hatfield was “useless silence.”
“Invoice mentioned, ‘Sounds good for The Everly Brothers not the Righteous Brothers,’” she informed Parade journal in 2015. “We thought ‘Oh, God.’ Then Bobby mentioned, ‘What am I alleged to do whereas the large man’s singing?’ and Phil (Spector) mentioned “You may go to the financial institution.’”
Whereas a lot of Weil’s friends struggled as soon as the Beatles caught on, she continued to make hits, generally with Mann, or with such companions as Michael Masser, David Foster and John Williams, with whom she wrote “For All the time” for the soundtrack to Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Synthetic Intelligence. Mann helped write Parton’s pop breakthrough “Right here You Come Once more”; the Peabo Bryson ballad “If Ever You’re In My Arms Once more”; James Ingram’s “Simply As soon as”; the Pointer Sisters’ “He’s So Shy”; and Lionel Richie’s “Working With the Evening.” In 1997, she was within the prime 10 once more with Hanson’s “I Will Come to You.”
“When they’re profitable, songs are like little novels. They’ve a starting, a center and an finish. You are feeling what the individual is feeling who’s singing it and it paints an image of the human situation,” Weil, who finally printed the novel I’m Glad I Did, informed Parade.
Her abilities reached properly past love ballads. She and Mann wrote one in all rock’s first anti-drug songs, “Kicks,” successful for Paul Revere and the Raiders in 1966. She additionally had a knack for lyrics about ambition and aspiration, comparable to “On Broadway” and its unforgettable opening line, “They are saying the neon lights are vivid/on Broadway.” The Animals had successful along with her story of working class frustration, “We’ve Acquired to Get Out of This Place.” The Crystals’ “Uptown” was a 1961 hit that touched upon race and sophistication in methods not usually heard in rock’s early years.
Downtown he’s simply one in all 1,000,000 guys
He don’t get no breaks
And he takes all they obtained to present
‘Trigger he’s obtained to dwell
However then he comes uptown
The place he can maintain his head up excessive
Uptown he is aware of that I’m standing by
Weil and Mann have been inducted into the Songwriters Corridor of Fame in 1987 and the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame in 2010, with King introducing them on the Rock Corridor ceremony. Mann and Weil have been supporting characters within the hit Broadway musical about King, Lovely, which opened in 2013 and documented the extraordinary friendship and rivalry between the 2 married {couples}. Mann and Weil’s musical They Wrote That? had a quick run in 2004.
Weil, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Japanese Europe, was born in New York Metropolis and studied piano and ballet as a toddler. She majored in theater at Sarah Lawrence College, however was inspired by an agent to attempt songwriting. By age 20, she was working for the publishing firm of Guys and Dolls composer Frank Loesser, and would quickly meet her future husband.
“I used to be writing with a younger Italian boy singer, the Frankie Avalon of his day, named Teddy Randazzo, when Barry got here in to play him a track,” she informed the Los Angeles Instances in 2016. “I requested the receptionist, ‘Who is that this man? Does he have a girlfriend?’ She mentioned, ‘He’s signed to a buddy of mine, Don Kirshner, and if I name Donny, perhaps you possibly can go up there to indicate him your lyrics and meet Barry once more.’ In order that’s what she did. And that’s what I did. He didn’t have an opportunity.”
