From Amarillo to Stockport: 15 of Neil Sedaka’s Greatest Songs and Their Extraordinary Stories | Neil Sedaka

Connie Francis – Stupid Cupid (1958)

As a busy young songwriter tasked with creating a hit for Connie Francis after the singer had released some flops, Neil Sedaka wasn’t so sure about Stupid Cupid: modest to a fault, he suggested that Frances, an “elegant lady,” would be insulted by her foolishness. Instead, I literally jumped up and down with excitement when I heard it. Understandably so: if Stupid Cupid is decidedly silly — listen to the off-key guitar riffs — it’s irresistibly silly, a perfect encapsulation of a certain kind of ’50s pop innocence, and Francis’s voice sells it completely.

Oh! Carol (1959)

Sedaka got his breakout as a performer in the 1958 film The Diary – inspired when Connie Francis refused to let him and songwriting partner Howard Greenfield search her diary for inspiration. Oh! Meanwhile, Carol was a paean to Sedaka’s ex-girlfriend Carol Klein – the irrepressibility of the melody contrasting with the misery of the lyrics (“I’m just a fool!”). Klein was impressed enough to write a song in response, Oh! Neal, which she recorded under her new pseudonym: Carole King.

One-Way Ticket (To the Blues) (1959)

Sedaka’s songs of the late 1950s and early 1960s are sometimes dismissed as the kind of poppy fluff that dominated the charts between the decline of rock ‘n’ roll and the rise of the Beatles. But that’s not entirely fair: despite the abundance of percussion and all the clever lyrical references to other rock ‘n’ roll songs – Heartbreak Hotel, Lonesome Town – there’s an admirably understated darkness about One Way Ticket (To the Blues), which is amplified by the ghostly backing vocals.

Calendar Girl (1960)

On the other hand, Sedaka and Greenfield were more than capable of producing subtle teen-pop novelties when needed, as evidenced by Calendar Girl, a song that somehow makes a teenage boy looking at a pin drop sound strangely helpful: “Maybe if you ask your mom and dad, they’ll let me take you to your little prom.” One suspects that the song’s backing vocals and countdown structure might have sparked the interest of a young Brian Wilson: listen to it alongside the Beach Boys’ 1965 single When I Grow Up (To Be a Man) and you can detect its influence.

Connie Francis – Where Are the Boys (1961)

The exact opposite of “Foolish Cupid,” the theme song to Francis’s first film—a teen comedy about premarital sex, a surprisingly racy subject in 1961—had inauspicious beginnings. It was written to order, in haste, with Greenfield protesting that the title was stupid: he and Sedaka “hated” the end result. This seems a puzzling verdict for an uplifting song filled with suitably cinematic strings and a strong sense of longing. It later became Francis’ signature song.

Breaking Up Is Hard (1962)

That Sedaka’s first US No. 1 hit was above standard early-’60s pop fare—it was certainly more melodically complex—was emphasized when the singer returned to it in the mid-’70s, dispensing with its doo-wop-inspired hook line and performing it as a lightly jazz-influenced piano ballad. It sounded less like a relic of a lost pop era and more like an entry in the Great American Songbook.

The Cyrkle – We Had a Good Thing Happened (1967)

The Beatles’ arrival in America was bad news for Sedaka, whose style had become obsolete overnight: his frank assessment of the band’s influence on his career was “not good.” It struggled throughout the rest of the 1960s, although a remake of the 1964 Beach Boys film Sunny is worth a shot. Meanwhile, We Had a Good Thing Goin’ – a minor hit for the Brian Epstein-managed band Cyrkle – proved it could move with the times: pure joyous pop in the sunshine, laced with a strange brass/woodwind effect that suggested someone was listening to a trumpet solo on Penny Lane.

Patty Drew – Working on Something Great (1968)

Sedaka’s career declined to the point that his own version of Workin’ On a Groovy Thing was only released in Australia – and he no longer had a record deal in the United States. But the song itself was great, and, moreover, it had legs: Fifth Dimenson had a 1969 pop hit with a luscious version in an easy-listening, gently psychedelic style, but Patty Drew’s earlier, less successful cover is the pick, mixing extremely uplifting arrangements with soulful grit.

Super Bird (1971)

Having discovered the way his former girlfriend Carole King had successfully transitioned from Brill Building writer to contemporary singer-songwriter with the 1971 release Tapestry, Sedaka thought he might be able to follow suit. He was wrong, although the resulting album Emergence was one of his best and a personal favourite. Opener “I’m a Song, Sing to Me” is a poignant cry from the commercial doldrums, but the killer track is the lavishly arranged Superbird, with its stunning shifts in mood and tempo from melancholy inflection to ecstasy.

Tony Christie – (Is This the Way to) Amarillo? (1971)

(Is this the way to) Amarillo? It has a strange story: it began life as a country-and-western-influenced track, recorded by Sheffield’s Tony Christie in a style very similar to the Central European brand of oompah pop known as schlager and went to No. 1 in Germany, reclaimed by Sedaka in the mid-1970s using an audibly reggae-influenced arrangement, and then unexpectedly became completely ubiquitous in 21st-century Britain after it became reissued as a charity single with a video starring comedian Peter Kay. “I think… I should play… the song?” Sedaka performs on his 2012 live album recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, sounding completely befuddled at the recent turn of events.

Solitaire (1972)

Neil Sedaka’s odyssey back to the 1970s is highly unlikely: touring the clubs of northern England, he discovered Strawberry Studios in Stockport, recently set up by four local musicians who were producing bubblegum songs for the American production company Super K. The following sessions were pivotal for all parties: Sedaka emerged with an exceptionally strong set of songs, including the wistful Solitaire, and the musicians were sufficiently inspired by the success of the next album to be released on their own under the name 10cc. Solitaire has become an easy listening standard, although it’s more emotionally charged than that tag suggests: the best version may be the Carpenters’ 1975 single, which features Karen Carpenter’s familiar but heartbreaking vocals.

Love Will Keep Us Together (1973)

Buoyed by the success of the Solitaire album, Sedaka returned to Stockport and the emerging 10cc the following year and recorded The Tra-La Days Are Over. This time, the big hit was the wonderfully euphoric “Love Will Keep Us Together,” blessed with a soaring chorus and a piano hook that he freely admitted had pinched him from the Beach Boys’ “Do It Again.” The cover of 1975’s Captain and Tennille is a masterpiece of guilty pleasure pop, and comes complete with a nod to its creator – “Sedaka’s Back!” – On the fade. It’s unlikely that it would end up influencing some of Strawberry Studios’ other clients – according to drummer Stephen Morris, Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart was a title in response to this.

Laughing in the Rain (1974)

By the mid-1970s, Sedaka was on a roll again: signed to Elton John’s Rocket label, and had a succession of hit songs. You can hear the restored confidence in the breezy “Laughing in the Rain”, a huge hit across the Atlantic – it was the eighth biggest-selling single of 1975 in America – and absolute mastery of the seemingly effortless melody. Every last inch of the song is filled with hooks. Deride it as round-edged and parent-friendly if you like: this is a great example of the craft of songwriting.

The Immigrant (1974)

Whatever he was, Neil Sedaka was not known as a writer of protest songs. “The Immigrant” from the album “Laughter in the Rain” is the exception that proves the rule. Lyricist Phil Cody appears to have been inspired by John Lennon’s contemporary struggles with immigration to the United States, as he looks at the arrival of his parents in the United States from Sicily, and Sedaka from Russia and Poland, bemoaning the passing of “the time when strangers were welcome here… they shut the door.” Sedaka responded with an appropriately somber and sad tune.

Bad Blood (1975)

Neil Sedaka continued to produce albums into the 2000s – releasing Christmas records, children’s albums and a collection of songs in Yiddish – but let’s leave him in his mid-’70s pomp. He has claimed that “Laughing in the Rain” was inspired by the “dead chord” Elton John popularized on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: on Bad Blood’s surprisingly funky electric piano his influence is most evident, and not just because it appears on the backing vocals.